Banning Bonanza Burgeoning---What's Going on?

There've been a rash of censorship incidents at libraries lately, more than I've ever noticed at one time. What's going on? Is our society growing less tolerant of others' views or are books more viscerally objectionable?
Here's some of the books in the news recently:

• It's Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris was purposely kept overdue from a Lewiston, Maine library by a woman claiming the book was sexually graphic, with "amoral abnormal contents".
• Seacoast NH author Rodman Philbrick's The Last Book in the Universe was banned in an elementary school in Bellevue, California because it was about gangs. (Philbrick's The Young Man and the Sea was the "Dover Reads" book selection a couple years ago!)
• The enormously popular Golden Compass trilogy by Philip Pullman (now a hit movie) was pulled from shelves in Toronto, ONT and Oshkosh, WI for its alleged anti-Catholic bias.
• Similarly, a pastor in Wakefield, MA decreed that the Harry Potter books would not appear in his Catholic school library's collection.
• Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates was kept in the Boulder, MT High School library by a vote of 4-1 by a Reconsideration Committee. An English teacher there wanted the book removed for liberal use of the f-word and sexual themes.
• A board in Lower Macungie, PA voted to keep King and King by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland on library shelves despite a petition by 40 residents citing the book's homosexual themes.
• An attempt to censor C.S. Adler's The Shell Lady's Daughter in the Campbell Co., WY elementary school was laid to rest by an 11-2 vote by a committee. The parent of a 4th grader had objected to the book's themes of "sexual thoughts, promiscuity, and suicide."
• The school board in Tuscaloosa County, AL voted to keep Ellen Wittlinger's Sandpiper in its high school library despite complaints about its "graphic language".

Now I confess that, other than the Harry Potter series, I haven't read any of these specific titles. But my views on the subject are simple. If you object to the material, don't read it. Remember that other people will want to read it, even if you don't. Keep an eye on what your children are reading and if you don't think it's appropriate for their age or maturity levels, feel free to ban it from your household. But your values may not be my values; your "objection threshholds" may be higher than mine. Every person must make the decision for himself or herself or their own family. That's why it's called The Freedom to Read!