Anti-gay editorial unsettling

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Straight Lifestyle Re:Anti-Gay Editorial
That is so funny. I guess that explains the high rate of single parenting. The nuclear family is as strong as ever! You’ve got to be joking. Also, how can you call yourself a professional who uphold ALA’s code of ethics and you are still on the wrong side of this civil rights issue. You sound like one of those bigots who were afraid to let African Americans move into their neighborhoods. You really need a reality check, friend.

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Aren’t Gays Human?
Well, I don’t know what sort of librarian you are if you aren’t acreditted by the ALA. Do you work in a comic book store?

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Straight Lifestyle Re:Anti-Gay Editorial
I am a ploygamist Mormon. I find your tone insulting.

Anonymous Patron says:

Isn’t this about Censoring a Library Book?
Why should this one dissenting opinion of one family be given so much weight in this issue? Don’t all families have the right to be represented in our libraries? Don’t we (all of us) as people have value? What sort of ethics are being used here?

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:It *is* a civil rights issue.
Statistically, children from two parent households are most likely to be sexually abused.

Also the vast majority of pedophiles are straight men. So…. statistically, who would you want around your children?

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Oh, that old chestnut?
OK, how about incest between two adult siblings? Let’s say they are both fully competent consenting adults.

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:It *is* a civil rights issue.
Statistically, children from two parent households are most likely to be sexually abused.

I’ve seen data that says otherwise. Take a look at this: Robin Fretwell Wilson, “Children at Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children After Divorce,” 86 Cornell Law Review 251 (2001).

Here is an excerpt: Similarly, a review of forty-two publications  observed that “the majority of children who were sexually abused … appeared to have come from single[-parent] families. I tend to believe this more than your statement. I should say that this article focuses mainly on girls; however, the article does discuss both girls and boys. I’d also suspect that girls are the biggest victims of sex abuse.

I would agree with your statement about pedophile being mainly men, but I’m not sure what that has to do with single-parent households and two-parent households.

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Reality Check
Really? A book showing the existance of gays is equal to promoting drinking and drug use? Wow, that’s some interesting logic.

Also you apparently don’t live in my neighborhood where gays are not the pariahs they apparently are in yours. People in my neighborhood treat gays like people… just people, not good people not bad people, just people, who do exist, so why can’t there be a book about them?

It goes back to the same old thing, if you don’t like it, don’t check it out. Tell your kids they can’t check it out. Don’t stop my child though, they aren’t yours to monitor.

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Aren’t Gays Human?
I believe the people who want the book removed are the ones who politicized this issue. It is a children’s book chosen by the librarian to have in her/his children’s section, none of us know that community or collection as well as that librarian but everyone here has jumped in with their own idea of what is or is not appropriate for that library.

  The person who wants the book removed is the one with the obvious agenda. The librarian isn’t reading it aloud to kids or requiring everyone read it, it is just one more element of what I assume is a collection of different books. The librarian may or may not have gone out looking to find a book depicting this issue, may or may not have had a request or seen a need for some discussion or the potential for interest in this book. We just don’t know why she chose it, we only know that someone objected and everyone has an opinion about it.

Anonymous Patron says:

Re:Precedent Friend
This is a slippery slope argument. Just because A, it does not necessarily follow that B. While the slippery slope is a real force in the physical world, slippery slope arguments tend to be erroneous.

Yeah, but the Lawrence decision (last year’s US Supreme Court decision dealing with sodomy) does open the door to this type of interpretation. The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court did cite Lawrence in its Goodrich decision (the gay marriage opinion). So, I wouldn’t just pooh-pooh the slippery slop argument.

Here is the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court in Goodrich citing the US Supreme Court from the Lawrence case:
 
There, the Court affirmed that the core concept of common human dignity protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution precludes government intrusion into the deeply personal realms of consensual adult expressions of intimacy and one’s choice of an intimate partner.

This is pretty broad language and it isn’t just limited to same-sex. Now, this doesn’t end it because their still has to be some analysis regarding the state’s interest in regulating marriage. But that is the whole point of the Goodrich case.

I think some smart lawyers are going to make these arguments regarding bigamy, polygamy and incest criminal laws and they are probably go to be successful.

The horse situation is probably the worst case scenario and I think your analysis is correct; however, I think the bigamy, poligamy and especially consenting adult siblings (incest) is something that will legitimately pop up.