Gary Price writes “The parents of an elementary school pupil are fuming over the book their daughter brought home from the school library: a children’s story about a prince whose true love turns out to be another prince.
Michael Hartsell said he and his wife, Tonya, couldn’t believe it when Prince Bertie, the leading character in “King & King,” waves off a bevy of eligible princes before falling for Prince Lee.
The book ends with the princes marrying and sharing a kiss.
“I was flabbergasted,” Hartsell said. “My child is not old enough to understand something like that, especially when it is not in our beliefs.”
Parents Angered by Book About Gay Princes
The debate on these issues is still not resolved. At any rate there is still an overwhelming majority of the public that lives as society has functioned since the beginning of time. School should be a partner to parents and their child rearing not a place to promote to children a hidden agenda. The prime concern of school and its library should be to consider the societal and religious sensitivities of it user group. If this is not respected it is professionally irresponsible.
Re:Parents Angered by Book About Gay Princes
>>The debate on these issues is still not resolved.
Probably never will be.
>>At any rate there is still an overwhelming
>>majority of the public that lives as society
>>has functioned since the beginning of time.
What? What does that mean?
>>School should be a partner to parents and their
>>child rearing not a place to promote to
>>children a hidden agenda.
So are you saying that by having this book they are promoting a hidden agenda? What is that agenda and how is it hidden? Who is hiding it and who are they trying to hide it from?
>>The prime concern of school and its library
>>should be to consider the societal and
>>religious sensitivities of it user group. If
>>this is not respected it is professionally >>irresponsible.
Is it possible to do that? Wouldn’t any user group have a wide variety of societal and religious sensitivities? How would the library pick and choose who to consider most important?
Censorship is a sticky wicket.
What about the children of parents who are not homophobic? What about the children of gay parents? Shouldn’t they be allowed to have access to this book?
I can understand if a parent objects to the content of a book, and there are usually options available to them for their own child. However, I disagree with your argument that having a book in a library constitutes an agenda. If the parent does not want their child reading a book dealing with certain subjects, then they need to let the librarian and/or the school know using the options available to them.
It figures
Well, I just checked and my local library has a copy of this book. From the catalogue:
It figures: it’s Swedish.
I’m kidding. Really
Re:It figures
Hey, it’s Dutch!
Re:It figures
Really? The authors are Linda de Haan & Stern Nijland, which looked pretty Swedish to me.
Homeschooling as alternative
There is a book review at Look Smart that places it in the Grade 3-5 group. A page at biblioreview.com, and which has a link to an SF Chronicle review, lists the target audience as children/young adult. That’s a pretty wide and implausible spread from where I’m sitting. At any rate, the Hartsell’s reaction seems to be pretty straight forward religious homophobia. The good news is that they can protect their child from the harmful idea of reality by homeschooling. That way, they can pretend to have complete control over every idea that gets into her mind.
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
I was shocked when hit the bottom of the article and read that they were considering moving their daughter to another school. What is that teaching their daughter? That because something doesn’t agree with your beliefs you should run away without considering it? It strikes me that this is more of the Parent’s problem than the schools. The school can’t place one families beliefs above anothers. This is a situation where the parents need to sit their daughter down and explain to her why they believe it is an inappropriate book and give her ways to handle situations like this in the future.
An aside, I was watching South Park last night, it was the sex education episode, and the lesson at the end was if you leave it up to the schools to teach morality (or whatever) you never know who is teaching your kids or what they are teaching them.
What Did the Librarian Know?
Hawley said she couldn’t comment on the book because she hadn’t seen it. She declined to say whether she knowingly selected a book on gay marriage.
Why hadn’t the librarian seen the book? I am not in an elementary school, but in the HS, I am personally responsible for each acquisition. And, I read most of them — yes, I am a saint :-)– because I know I work in a conservative community.
Issues of censorship aside, the librarian should have some idea of what’s in his/her library.
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
>>At any rate, the Hartsell’s reaction seems to be pretty straight forward religious homophobia.
Are we reading the same article? There is no mention of religion. You are equating “beliefs” with religion. I
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
>>At any rate, the Hartsell’s reaction seems to be pretty straight forward religious homophobia.
Really? I don’t recall any mention of religion in the article.
Is this conclusion the product of all those processes firing in your mind or just another opportunity to couch your personal bias as logical thinking?
Your logic carried forward. Atheists can’t be homophobic or people with “beliefs” are de facto Christian nut cases.
(see Angelfire for dissenting opinions criteria)
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
>>Your logic carried forward. Atheists can’t be homophobic or people with “beliefs” are de facto Christian nut cases.
I wouldn’t carrie his logic so far forward, but I would agree with him that Christian & homophobic go hand-in-hand.
I hate to use the word homophobic in this case. Christian & tolerant (towards anything different) are usually mutually exclusive.
Re:It figures4 6522/p1/article.jhtml it says that the book was originally published in the Netherlands.
In the article link supplied by a poster below,
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1299/3_48/845
Also, if you check out some websites about the Netherlands, you will see the double a (aa) in many words and names.
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
Here’s an opportunity for you to do a good deed for humanity. Do a little key word search and tell us how many atheist organizations, or individual atheists, propose that homosexuals are morally disordered and intrinsically evil. How many Wiccan covens spend Samhaim celebrating the murder of a human being (Mathew Shepherd) because he was a faggot? The self-same groups who do do those things are the ones who proclaim (wrongly) that the U.S. is a christian nation.
Now, you still haven’t learned how to think, and your knee keeps jerking to everything I write, and the end result is that you consistently portray my claims as being against all members of any given group. Kindly quote the exact words where I say ALL christians are misohomonists. Or would you like to explain how Christian Reconstructionists can’t possibly be nut cases just because they’re “christians”?
And by the way, Tomeboy, you might want to read what you quoted from my message more carefully. Try to keep your foot on the floor so that reflex doesn’t block your vision and you might find a qualifier in that sentence. That qualifier is there because the Hartsell’s reaction does conform to the type. And the phrase “hidden agenda” is a code word common to religious hysteria. (Note: r-e-l-i-g-i-o-u-s, not necessarily c-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n alone.)
Re:What Did the Librarian Know?
Does that mean you self-censor topics not based on their quality but on their content because it may offend?
Also, what do you think of the parents not returning the book?
Re:Parents Angered by Book About Gay Princes
The prime concern of a school library should be education, not kowtowing to the “religious sensitivities” of one pair of parents who object to its holdings.
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
>>Kindly quote the exact words where I say ALL christians are misohomonists
My question first. How do folks with “beliefs” become “religious”?
>>Here’s an opportunity for you to do a good deed for humanity.
Humanity??? Here’s another “H” word, Hyperbole. Now one more for you to consider, Halt. I don’t recall using “morally disordered” or “instrically evil”. Just as I don’t recall “religious” in the article. But you somehow do.
>>Do a little key word search and tell us how many atheist organizations, or individual atheists, propose that homosexuals are morally disordered and intrinsically evil.
According to the Kinsey Report, 14.1% of American don’t believe in God. (Free Inquiry, Summmer 2003) A University of Connecticut poll taken last month shows 62% Americans oppose gay marriage ( an thus by defintion are homophobic according to the Advocate). I’ll leave you to do the math.
>>How many Wiccan covens spend Samhaim celebrating the murder of a human being (Mathew Shepherd) because he was a faggot?
I presume you can speak to homophobic Wiccan’s better than I.
Partisan Review
Summer2002, Vol. 69 Issue 3, p338, 15p
Homosexuality in the Middle East: Summer/Fall90, Vol. 12 Issue 3/4, p55, 28p
Tikkun v9n4 (Jul 1994): 53-57
Public Interest n112 (Summer 1993):
>>. (Note: r-e-l-i-g-i-o-u-s, not necessarily c-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n alone.)
Let’s make a deal. I will accept this if you do. Perhaps a nice expose on your web page explaining the difference?
Dutch vs. Swedish
Swedish would be Kung och Kung. ‘aa’ is preserved in some Scandinavian personal and place names, but chiefly Danish & Norwegian (e.g. ‘Kierkegaard’). Modern orthography dictates that ‘aa’ be contracted to the ‘a’ with the funny little circle above it (Å å). The ‘ij’ in ‘Nijland’ is very typical for Dutch and Flemish, and would probably occur in Swedish only in borrowed words (and probably only in names). ‘De’ is a Dutch definite article that can be used in surnames.
Re:Parents Angered by Book About Gay Princes
We do not have all the information about the school that the library serves. The parents that came forward are vocal and are willing to express their convictions. The fact that no one else comes forward does not translate into yielding to one isolated opinion. Many people may feel that way but do not express their views. Shouldn’t we as professionals evaluate our audience and the communal needs. Apathy and fear do not mean acquiescence.
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
Pardon me? I’m both Christian and tolerant, thanks, so please put that broad brush away. Yes, there are Christians who are homophobic… but there are also non-Christians who are too.
Re:What Did the Librarian Know?
I self-censor all the time. I think we all do, because we don’t have the funding to purchase quality materials for each level of learning ability. BTW, not topics, but individual items.
Library school 101: user community. Yes, I think you have to take your patrons into account when selecting. Not because I’m afraid of a challenge, (I have had some weirdness in that area), but because I want to provide the users with what they will use.
One of the weirdnesses I encountered was a book never returned by the parent. They chose to pay for it. Now, I’d previously read the book, was not as impressed as I’d hoped to be, so I did not replace it.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Aren’t these “complainers” the same people who were upset when Jewish people or African American people wanted to move into their neighborhoods? Homophobia is bigotry. The world is changing. The younger generation doesn’t see gay marriage as a bad thing. It’s time we start calling these “complainers” what they really are: bigots.
Re:Parents Angered by Book About Gay Princes
Hidden agenda? I guess having to ride at the back of the the bus was once considered a “hidden agenda” too. How can you as a professional uphold the ALA code of ethics and still come out on the wrong side of this civil rights issue? Hmm.
Re:Homeschooling as alternative
Whoa, you guys are taking this way too personally.
Love,
A Big Sissy (6ft)