Parents fight library’s gay-themed books

People can be offended by gay lifestyle…

The individual gay American was never told to use a separate rest room, go to a separate school, or sit in the back of the bus.

Yet, that’s what many religious elements want for them. And I’ll go so far as to point out that in ultra-religious societies, such as Iran, homosexuality is a capital crime. Which it also would be in an ultra-conservative North America.

Omnibus reply to various and sundry points

What is objectionable is the attempt to create a “situation on the ground” of acceptance. –Eli

Oh, yes, absolutely, it is totally unacceptable that anyone, anywhere should ever be taught tolerance. After all, how can we possibly be expected to press-gang our drones into perpetrating pogroms if they are going to ask embarrassing questions about why they are supposed to hate the Fringe Group Of The Month?

It is not the job of libraries to force feed the issue. –Eli

No, it is the job of libraries to make available the widest possible range of viewpoints and as much information as they can so people can make up their own minds. At any rate, nobody is forcing anybody to read those books. Nobody is saying to Ms. Claybrooks that she will be put to the fire and the sword if she doesn’t embrace homosexuality. No, all that talk about hellfire and damnation and how the Fringe Group Of The Month is morally disordered and intrinsically evil seems to be coming from
Christians and aimed at homosexuals, not vice versa.

I have absolutely no problem with a parent that gets upset that her child has been exposed to this type of material. –David

Perhaps we should get upset. Don’t forget, it was the child’s mother who exposed her to that material. How come nobody is howling to the moon that she should be tried as an unfit parent for daring to read her child a “homosexual book”?

A library should buy these books if they have people in their community who want them. Keeping them in a seperate section satifies the rest of the community who don’t. –GregS

Segregation is unconstitutional and illegal. I am willing to state unequivocally that such a move would never surive a challenge in the courts.

Yes, yes — I’m sure somebody is going to say that it’s segregating books, not people. The end result will be the same: discrimination against a non-mainstream group.

There are some topics that should not be open and available to children without a parent being involved no matter how ‘age-appropriate’ its been written. –GregS

Which raises the question: Who gets to decide? Jerry Falwell? George Bush? And to whom will you complain when you find out that some of the stuff you want to look at has been banned as well?

Gee — here’s a novel idea: why not just make all kinds of ideas and opinions available and let every person pick and choose for him or herself what to believe and what to teach their children. Golly. We could call a system like that the free market place of ideas.

You as an individual are free to do as you wish up until it affects us as a whole. –GregS

Here’s a clue: How I live my life has no bearing on how you live yours. How you live your life has no bearing on how I live mine. Homosexuality does not affect me in any way, shape, or form. It does not affect society either. Homosexuals are part of the general population. They are neither morally superior or morally inferior statistically. I will state unequivocally that among homosexuals, there is the same ratio as among heterosexuals who are good parents and bad parents, and good people and
bad people.

That is not bigoted it is society’s self-preservation. –GregS

Uh-huh.

You do know, don’t you, that Adolf Hilter and Joseph Stalin both used that rationale to commit genocide? That ultra-religious Islamist lunatics use that specious rationale against both Israel and the United States?

If she doesn’t want her children reading these books, fine. That’s her right. The problem comes when she tries to make the library take over her parenting for her. –Kat

It’s called “abdication of responsibility”. What it boils down to is: I want society or someone else to assume total control over the raising of my children or how I live my life so nothing will ever be my fault.

Of the thousands of books that COULD be purchased for the library, the library decided that they should push this particular issue with these books–knowing full well that they were/are controversial. –commonsense

There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere. Green Eggs and Ham is the story of a vicious, meat-eater who criminally harrasses a vegan until the vegan is forced to violate his chosen life-style. And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street teaches children how to lie. Anything that has anything to do with Hallowe’en is satanic and occultic.

Buy anything. Tell me what it’s about and I’ll tell you why it shouldn’t be allowed on the shelves.

And the idea that “godless, heathen librarians” are pushing some kind of a secular humanist hidden agenda is just another conspiracy theory.

And remember this: “hidden agenda” is a stock code word for the intolerant.

Parents, on the other hand, assume that their tax dollars are supporting a “safe” place for their kids to read and check out books. –commonsense

I’m a parent, and I pay my taxes. I assume my tax dollars are going to the purchase of ideas, and that some of those ideas I will not agree with. If I don’t agree with those ideas, that is my problem, not everybody else’s.

Sure, parents should, and can, and do, monitor their children’s reading habits–otherwise this mother would have never known her child had this book. –commonsense

The child did not have the book, the mother was reading it to her.

Where does it stop? What if she objected to interracial marriages and was offended by a book that showed that? –slashgirl

Been there, done that.

1959: The Rabbits’ Wedding

A picture book for children. After protests by the White Citizens’ Council it was put on the reserved shelf in Alabama public libraries. Because it was thought to promote racial integration.

The alphabet primer Jambo Means Hello, was challenged by white supremacists on the grounds that it would help Blacks resist assimiliation. The book offers words in Swahili with accompanying English text, but all the illustrations are of Blacks.

Teaching evolution was forbidden by fiat in one of the Bible Belt states and came under attack just this January in the state of Georgia.

But whereas a black mother and white father, or vice versa, still offer both a mother and father to a family, gay parents do not. –GregS

Bosh. Being a homosexual no more invalidates you as a parent than being Black or Jewish does.

All I am saying is that how we view male and female relationship is crosscultural and is as old as the world. –Eli

The geocentric viewpoint was another popular consensus of reality that had no basis in physical fact. People were burned at the stake for daring to question doctrine, not because they were wrong.

I remember hearing…. not so long ago that to raise our children “It Takes a Village.” –tomeboy

Yes, a village; not a borg collective. A village. One with a number of diverse thinking individuals.

Big freaking deal, I am a bigot, so is everyone else … –mdoneil

“Oh, what an egregious piece of bovine scatology, that is.” Everyone has prejudices, that does not mean everyone is bigoted. The difference is: a non-bigot controls his prejudices, a bigot allows his prejudices to control him. The non-bigot is willing to set aside his viewpoints long enough to consider those of others in an effort to understand. The bigot simply destroys what he doesn’t understand.

… and you all want books that mirror your opinion in the public library. –mdoneil

This is a half truth. Rational people and non-bigots do want books that mirror their opinions, but are also willing to allow books that run counter to their opinions. It is the intolerant who will not allow viewpoints they don’t agree with. I’m perfectly comfortable with permitting books such as Mein Kampf or Das Kapital or The Turner Diaries. But, then, ideas don’t frighten me because I know how to handle them.

Am I to understand that yourself and others on this board would embrace this book in their collections with the same passion for “tolerance” as the book in question here? –tomeboy

Why ever should we not?

“Know your enemy; the first rule of war.” –Robert Anson Heinlein.

How can I know what my enemy is, what bankrupt ideals he holds, if I can’t examine his ideas for myself? I’m supposed to take your word for it? Believe George Bush or John Ashcroft? Rumsfeld? Not a chance.

Compare a woman who wants books about homosexuals removed from the children’s section of the library to Nazis. […] I wonder how many survivors of the Holocaust; how many from the prison camps; now many observant Jews you have offended with that remark. –mdoneil

Homosexuals were also sent to the concentration camps. The difference was, they were sent for “rehabilitation”. You know — to be “cured”. Almost like so many misohomonist “Christians” think homosexuality can be cured today.

Aside from that, censorship is a hallmark of totalitarianism. I should examine the issue to see if censorship doesn’t lead to totalitarianism as much as totalitarianism leads to censorship.

Hmm, persecuted, you mean systematically identified, detained, tortured and murdured. I guess we do that in the US. –mdoneil

There are certainly religious elements who would like to. The Republican Leadership Council challenged Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal due to a lack of intolerance, and the so-called Christian Reconstruction movement advocates death by stoning for fag & lezzies, heathens and pagans, “abortionists” (OBS/GYN physicians), . . . oh, yes, and disobedient children.

Oh, wait the government doesn’t murder people because of their religion or perversion in this country. –mdoneil

Well, that’s a philosophical argument. I for one certainly believe that George Bush’s censorship program against sexual health information will consign to death a large number of sexually active people, both hetero- and homosexual, and that means in the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. as much as in those African countries full of porch monkeys.

Thanks for reinforcing my view that the vast majority of Americans have no idea about history. –mdoneil

The larger problem is not those who haven’t learned any history, it’s those who will not learn the lessons of history. Santayana’s aphorism cannot be denied.

I’m sure there is a group near your home who believes the Holocaust did not happen, … –mdoneil

Most likely, and here’s a clue for you in that regard: not all Holocaust deniers are neo-nazis, some of them are merely people who think for themselves and question the commonly held assertion from a viewpoint of scientific scepticism. These are people who are trying to understand instead of merely taking it on authority.

While there were certainly abuses of Fascism, as an ideology it certainly surpasses any other – assuming the abuse can be stemmed. –mdoneil

Ha! You totally blew that one, guy.

Fascism /n. 1 hist. the totalitarian principle and organization of the exreme right-wing nationalist movement in Italy (1922-43). 2 also (fascism) a any similar nationalist and authoritarian movement, esp German National Socialism. b derogatory any system of extreme right-wing or authoritarian views.

There isn’t any question of fascism being a matter of abuse of the system. It is founded on extreme intolerance from the get go.

Fascist is the word du jour to describe anyone who won’t let someone do what they want: … –mdoneil

Only by simple-minded fools who don’t know the power of words and have no understanding of personal freedom.

I get no specific legal protection for being Zoroastoran or whatever religion I might be, nor do I get any specific protection if I choose to eschew religion. –mdoneil

Another egregious piece of bovine scatology. You want legal protection? Try this on for size:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Wow what a leap. Goofy woman who wants no gay books in the library, to genocidal dictator. –mdoneil

Every genocidal dictator has enacted programs of censorship. Every genocidal dictator has taken it upon himself to decide what the people are allowed to read.

That being “tolerance” is a relative term. Each have you have responded with “intolerant” comments directed at me. I thank you all. –tomeboy

You play the wounded innocent so well, Tomeboy. I sincerely doubt, however, that you have any capacity to differentiate between intolerance and irritation. Here’s a clue: anybody who says that a book is obscene because it does not preach that homosexuals are morally disordered and intrisically evil is not a tolerant person.

So you mean it does not really matter if there is stuff in the library that I don’t like. Stuff that offends me? –mdoneil

If there is stuff that offends everybody then the playing field is level. Get over yourself. Your position is nothing more than a persecution complex.

Is it too much to ask to have librarians just buy books that provide entertaining, educational, and instructive material to the readers–rather than pushing radical agendas?!!! –commonsense

You mean dumbed down crap like Dick and Jane? I read that when I was seven years old. It bored me.

Short answer: yes, it is too much to ask.

Thought provoking answer: Isn’t King and King entertaining, educational, and instructive? And why isn’t that being allowed if it is?

I wonder how tolerant of censorship they would be if a non-christian objected to the library having christian materials in its collection. –tangognat

The answer is: not at all, of course. The one time the Bible was challenged as hate literature and pornography, it was defended on grounds of historicity and spirituality. Arguments that avail naught when the bible-thumpers are trying to burn books.

However Fascism could work, but the dictators that attempted Fascism failed to follow the doctorine and became egotistical madmen. –mdoneil

Fascism could never work. It’s not a question of the system being abused by madmen, it’s a question of the anti-libertarianism environment which would chafe at the human spirit until free people overthrew the system. (Being free starts with an attitude.)

I do however espouse strong autocratic control as one of your definitions states. –mdoneil

Then move to a country that has such control. Why do you stay in a free country like the U.S. when you are equally free to leave it? Iran will take you in. Turkmenistan seems to be overrun by the remnants of the Taliban and is going the same way Afghanistan did under their rule. Saudi Arabia, Malyasia, and Indonesia are all censorious regimes, although not so intolerant of homosexuals that fags and lezzies will be stoned in those places. The High Holy State of China will be more than happy to monitor your internet use to
make sure you don’t suffer from ideological contamination.