WorldNetDaily published this wacky, factless diatribe on Banned Books Week, and how libraries are really banning the Christian view by not including antigay scripture tracts with all their young adult fiction. We also have AgapePress highlighting the efforts of exgay Deb French to remove two homosexual magazines from the Upper Arlington Public Library in Arlington, OH. We also have the month-old story whereby Laurie Taylor is trying to get homosexual literature banned from an Arkansas public library. Go back a couple of months and you find more.
I suppose ex-gays like Ms. French would feel awkward about libraries having much more homosexual literature than ex gay literature. I’m surprised there’s not more exgay literature in our libraries, seeing as how hundreds of thousands of people have become ex-gay. With that many exgays and only 2.3 percent of men declaring themselves as gay, you would think the number of authors and books would be a little more even.
I guess this battle will continue just under the radar for as long as the imbalance between gay and antigay literature exists. It rarely gets hot enough to make national headlines, but it seems like every few months another concerned parent decides that certain books are too tabboo for libraries and must be eliminated. Now that the ex gay crowd is getting in on the action, we might be seeing more demands for ex gay literature, rather than just the classical Farenheight 451 Christians.
A favorite quote of mine from the article:
“”Silo” recently discovered his male attraction to a female penguin, blasting the interspecies analogy to bits. Yet the misleading book remains.
“”Silo” recently discovered his male attraction to a female penguin, blasting the interspecies analogy to bits. Yet the misleading book remains.”
Would the fact that a penguin was once straight and then became gay tear the straight interspecies analogy to bits? One gay penguin takes a new mate? If this is what they are holding on to, this is absurd.
This article left me laughing out loud. To paraphrase it:
“Why, why, all the the banned books are gay themed!! See!! That proves they have a pro-gay agenda. You don’t balance the banned gay books with banned anti-gay books. And we know there are banned anti-gay books because there aren’t a whole pile of anti-gay books on the shelves. There’s no fiction about how awful the homosexual lifestyle is, there’s no book about how penguins ruin their lives with same-sex mating, there’s no pamplets about where gay people should not go to get support services. So SOMEONE must be banning it.”
They don’t see the irony that when they ban a book it becomes a banned book – by definition. We aren’t out there banning their idiocy because it just doesn’t matter. And when there’s a program on banned books, only the ones actually banned show up.
The reason there’s no anti-gay fiction on the shelf is because there’s no market for it.
Just how would you go about writing a story about penguins to show the anti-gay view. Or maybe they want Heather Has Two Mommies and Is Miserable, or perhaps a pamphlet on where to go to get anti-gay services. No one wants to read this stuff (even them) so it doesn’t get written.
It’s funny how crazy the bigots get when confronted with their own bigotry.
Since I live and teach in Arkansas, I took special note of the NW Ark case. Digging through the links on the web pages reveals the quotes in the books being banned. My question is this: “If these books are so bad, why are you reading them enough to be able to quote them?”
Most of the entries were for books at the high school, many involving coarse language. I teach in a HS and the kids use very coarse language already. I doubt that these books are teaching them any new vulgarities.
In addition, the sexual references are already parts of some of the kids lives, including rape, incest and other violence. The fact that many include positive love and affection which happens to be GBLT in nature should be the least of the problems compared to the negative examples.
mudd,
I don’t think they actually do read them. Otherwise how could the desciptions be so far off the actual plotlines?
I think they just skim them for bad words. i did the same thing when I was in junior-high; I just didn’t issue a press release. 🙂
Re: “I just didn’t issue a press release.
Me neither. But it is how I wrote my book reports.
Re: Re: “I just didn’t issue a press release.”Me neither. But it is how I wrote my book reports.Ahh, yes… the old “read a 600 page Russian novel overnight” trick…This technique was working fine for a mate a school until we “did” Deal Souls and by skimming he completely missed the fact that the book was a work of irony. The first paragraph of his report made if perfectly clear that he had not, in fact, read the book.But then again, this is how AFA work with their books to be objected to. They spot a gay character, and then look to see if they a) die horribly b)repent (horribly) c)change their mind and go straight. If the answer to any these is “no” then we have a “gay activist books promoting homosexuality to our children”.
Urgh, that would be “Dead Souls” not “Deal Souls”.
Since I lived in Arkansas for 5 years, and still think of it as a beautiful place, I must point out something. The illiteracy rate there runs at something like 25% of the population. When you go into a grocery store, there are no generic products. Everything must have a picture on the label. A lovely place. Over run with superstition.
Dalea,
I have a similar story. I grew up in Appalachia where my parents ran a neighborhood grocery store. I was always having to help customers do their shopping because they couldn’t read the labels. That was before Campbell’s soup started putting pictures on their cans. The row of soups all looked the same.
I remember one time a man came in and complained that the chip dip he had bought had gone bad and wanted his money back. He dumped a container of cottage cheese on the counter when he said this.
It’s amazing that in this great superpower of a country that we have places where we haven’t achieved Mexico’s or Iraq’s literacy rate. Efforts to curtail reading of any sort are dangerous to our wellbeing as a society, never mind just us gay folks. I love libraries, spending many hours in them every month, and am frustrated at such backward attempts to limit my reading.
Oh yes… I love Appalachia, too. Beautiful place, caring souls, misguided politics and all.
I doubt very much the 25% illiteracy rate in Arkansas. I would like to see the proof of that statistic. I also doubt that illiteracy is high in any part of Appalachia. One of the things that evengelical Protestantism does emphasize is the ability to read the Bible. This actually, historically, has produced high literacy rates among Protestants. They might not read much else but they do read that.
dalea at September 27, 2005 02:30 AM
Since I lived in Arkansas for 5 years, and still think of it as a beautiful place, I must point out something. The illiteracy rate there runs at something like 25% of the population. When you go into a grocery store, there are no generic products. Everything must have a picture on the label.
I’ll merely point out that that probably isn’t unusual. MS Windows icons are nothing other than pictures. The icons make it easier for the users to access the programs from, for example, the desktop.
I’m not suggesting that the use of graphics implies illiteracy–it may well. But the use of graphics does not necessarily imply illiteracy.
Ah yes, but where in the bible is Chicken with Stars soup mentioned? 😉
Realistically though, I doubt that the 25% illiteracy rate carries throughout either Appalachia or Arkansas as a whole, but I would imagine in some of the more remote areas it might be close to that.
I remember on Oprah, years ago…a Christian Coalition spokes woman took great offense at and wanted banned, Maya Angelou’s autobiographical book, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.”
In it she is frank about her sexual molestation by a relative and how it affected her.
The CC woman called it pornography while MA was sitting right there. And yes, this woman had never actually read the book.
I read that book when I was about 14 and MA was age eleven in the story.
As a young teen, it made me sad…and certainly aware that this sort of thing happened, and I needed to be sympathetic to my peers around me.
Considering that her reality is shared by thousands of children, her literature and the proceeds went on to help survivors of such abuse.
The trauma so profound that MA didn’t utter a word for five years.
If you ever heard this MA’s beautiful, cello like speaking voice, you would really understand what a tragedy her experience was, and yet a triumph all the same.
Children, aren’t as dumb as people would like to think.
And the preservation of innocence is one thing…teaching the young how to go into denial is another.
I think the statistics are closer to 25% percent when talking about functional illiteracy (vs. complete illiteracy).
All I can say is that I encountered illiteracy far, far more often back home than I have anywhere else. Go to Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, or Lexington, and things are pretty much as you would find it anywhere else in the country. But go to Greenup Co. KY or Hazard Co. W.V or Vinton Co. OH and you’ll be amazed.
The Lexington Public Library Foundation reports that 30% of central Kentuckians are functionally illiterate. Statewide, 40% read at level I (below 6th grade) or level II (below 8th grade). I could go on, but you get the idea.
Often, people who are “functionally illiterate” can still read simple signs and instructions. But book-reading is not going to be their strong suit, which is why strong library programs are such an important part of a good literacy campaign.
As for a strong Bible-reading tradition among evangelical protestants, it has been my observation that Appalachian culture has developed a remarkably strong oral tradition that is absolutely fascinating. Remember, we’re talking about a culture that not only has had a hhigh illiteracy rate (The churches didn’t run the schools after all), but a high poverty rate as well. Bibles historically were often in short supply. Hence they developed an oral culture using a rhythmically sing-song shout approximating a chant, punchuated by sharp breaths and exclamations.
I wish I had some tape recordings of the sing-song preaching of Appalachian preachers that soaked the airwaves of local radio when I was growing up. I don’t think I’ve heard anything like it anywhere else since I moved. The closest thing might be what you find among southern black gospel preachers, but the vocalization and methods is still very different from them. Appalachian preachers have developed an oral tradition that is entirely unique to that region. Culturally, it really is a “whole ‘nother world” there.
Okay. So much for Memory Lane. Back to the libraries . . .