Facebook Fan Page Reinstated

A gay author whose Facebook fan page was removed because of the title of his book says the social networking site's administrators have reinstated the page.

Frank Anthony Polito said last week that Facebook issued him a notice that the title of his novel Band Fags, about two teens in the 1980s, was in violation of its terms of use. Polito told The Advocatethat the Facebook page was created in 2008 and that he hit no roadblocks when setting up the URL, Facebook.com/bandfags.

"What bothers me about the whole Facebook thing is ... it's like they have some robot scanning through all of the pages on the site looking for 'offensive' words," he said last week. "When they came across 'fag' attached to mine, no one bothered to investigate why it's there. They just assumed that I'm some hateful gay-basher and took down my book's fan page."

The fan page was reinstated Wednesday night. An administrator wrote to Polito that the page was deleted erroneously.