Saw a story that got me riled. I don't think you'll find a bigger 1st amendment advocate than me, and I got pretty torqued up reading about this.
In my home state of Texas, a group called the Republican Leadership Council is asking that the local public library board pull a couple of children's books from the shelves. Another group, calling themselves Mainstream Montgomery County has reared up its head in opposition, siting the usual stuff about separation of church and state and not imposing religious values on others.
I first came across this on Jack Kluth's People's Republic of Seabrook, where it is argued that book banning is one step away from book burning. Hmm. Perhaps. A search through Google found darned few hard news stories on this issue. First there...
...were the Houston Chronicle article that Jack Kluth mentions and the Montgomery County News, which take an almost-identical slant. The only story which does not focus on the "anti-censorship" folks was this story from The Courier. Everything else I could find online was a bunch of editorials comparing those who have a problem with these books to Nazis, Communists, fascists, etc.
As should be obvious, no liberal-minded person has enough information here to make a reasonable judgement. Most of the coverage is distinctly one-sided. But it looks from the coverage like both groups full of closed-minded people who want to ram their personal moral views down everyone else's throats.
The worst by far, from what I can see, are the "anti book-banners," piously claiming to be fighting the evil forces of intolerance. Good God, what a bunch of turds these people come across as. No respect for democracy, no respect for diversity, no tolerance of people who don't share their narrow worldview and small-minded prejudices.
Let's get a few things straight:
Removing books from the shelves of a public library is not "banning" a book. Removal from a library or a school does not make it illegal to sell a book, own it, or read it. Nor will removing it from public library shelves be "one step closer" to having everyone herded into re-education camps run by Pat Robertson.
Some people are gay, or have gay kids or friends, and want to see more tolerance of gays. Fine. I'm with them on that--wholeheartedly. Are they willing, in return, to have more tolerance for people who might have religious or other objections, who worry about what their kids will be taught? Or are people who disagree with us to be considered axiomatically evil?
As for people who don't find the books objectionable: hey, isn't that the whole point? If a large segment of a community finds something offensive, who are we to ram it down their throats? To tell them they cannot trust their children alone in the local public library? That they have no voice in how their tax dollars are spent?
I for one would argue strongly that, regardless of my personal feelings about any book, a public library should be careful in what selections it presents to the children of a community. If more than a tiny handful of people object to a certain book being freely available to children, then elected officials have a duty to take their views into consideration. Furthermore, either way, those people have a right to their opinion without being compared to Nazis, communists, or evil fundamentalists.
I'll go even further: to try to deny those who pay for a public library the right to input on what it will carry is itself a form of censorship.
A good compromise might be a section for "controversial" books where only adults could request them. I don't see anybody proposing that, but then again, I see very little being done by reporters to get to the bottom of the story--they seem to prefer to sensationalize the conflict, hoping to turn it into a real-life re-enactment of Inherit The Wind.
On the other hand, I don't see much from the so-called Republican Leadership Council suggesting any kind of compromise or attempt at goodwill. They tell us the books are offensive, and that they are not Nazis. We're all glad to hear they aren't Nazis, but do they have any more to say? Their web site says almost nothing
On the gripping hand, from the news accounts, I don't see much effort to ask the RLC about such things. It's all accounts of people who "feel threatened" and who make pious noises about "fighting censorship" while others make noises about "protecting children."
I say, a pox on all their houses: upon the press for shallow reporting, upon the so-called "mainstream" group claiming to fight "book banning,", and upon the RLC, who has a web page but doesn't bother to promote or defend their exact position, or discuss whether they're even open to reasonable compromises.
But let's not kid ourselves: this isn't about "book banning." This isn't one step short of Fahrenheit 451. It's not about whether the "tolerant" will win over the "intolerant," about "the enlightened vs. the closed-minded." It's about whether a local county in Texas gets to decide democratically what books should be on the children's shelves, and how such decisions should be made.
The American Library Association has just concluded its annual "Banned Books Week," a self-righteous and melodramatic celebration of the freedom to read--one apparently under constant siege by narrow-minded ideologues.
One year to mark the week, my local library put up a mannequin of someone reading a book behind bars. Subtle stuff!
You're right--taking a library book off a shelf isn't even close to a ban. And most of what the ALA objects to aren't actual "bans" but simply challenges to books, where a zealous parent complains about a library book being accessible to children.
Meanwhile Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton "challenge" a movie, asking for apologies and scene edits, and those same self-righteous free speech lefties are afraid to criticize them.
When I was a kid (longer and longer ago), kids under twelve weren't allowed to checkout books from the "grownup" part of the library. (Their parents could do it for them, but when I was a kid I couldn't be less interested in reading the "boring" grownup books; I was firmly entrenched in Nancy Drew land.)
I must say I've never really understood the take-that-nasty-book-off-the-shelves people. All they have to do is tell their kids what a great book it is, how every good little boy and girl reads it, present them with their very own copy... I guarantee you no child will so much as touch the book then. (I worked for me: to this day I haven't read Treasure Island, my father's favorite book and one he was always trying to get me to read.) But once you ban something, it becomes inherently fascinating.
Without doubt, more people will probably read these books as a result of the so-called "ban." It's what always happens.
It will also be mighty tempting for the author to play the martyr here. No sign of it so far, much to the author's credit.
As a writer, I would LOVE for something I wrote to be banned by some library somewhere--the frisson of being associated with something forbidden! I think Mark Twain actually wrote a sarcastic letter to some library, asking them to declare a certain book of his unsuitable for children...
Mark Twain! My favorite author.
And, as you know, Huckleberry Finn has long been deemed "unsuitable for children."
And banned from some libraries.
When reading about these library issues I often wonder where one group or person's wailing about one's freedom of choice begins the slippery slide of ramming one's values down another's throat.
Do a WhoIs search on www.rlctx.org and you'll find that the administrative contact is the same as the American Library Association! Okay, I'm just kidding, but sometimes it seems like the ALA needs "book burners" more than the Bush family needs Saddam.
Looking at the Rep. Leadership Council site gives me the impression that profligate spending and the concomitant tax burden is much more of a concern than book content.
I don't think libraries need to be deviant showcases. Do elementary school kids need to study Madonna's "Sex" book? Did the Boulder library (half an hour from my house) really need to exhibit a clothesline of dangling penis plaster casts? (Gene Simmons, please report to the library office...) Kind of adds a whole new twist to National ENDOWMENT for the Arts, doesn't it?
As for the Inherit The Wind movie, it's about as fine an example of agitprop as you'll find, so rather than wanting a celluloid roast, I'd like to mandate viewing of it, alongside a little research into the actual history of the case.
Has anyone else noticed that "protecting the children" has become the responsibility-free method of control freaks everywhere?
So anyone objecting to any given proposal on this is automatically placed in the "insensitive, child-hating clod" category.
It used to be "fighting communism" or "protecting motherhood" but those are obsolete nowadays...
Dean, my apologies for suggesting on Jack's site about this piece that you didn't do comments. Your link there went to a non-commentable spot, so I commented at Jack's.
Okay, I loathe to comment because I don't want people to regard me as an extremist. Oh hell, here goes anyway.
I don't want the schools teaching my child about sex. I don't want the government or anyone else telling me when I should discuss it with my children. I don't want books that discuss homosexuality (explicitly) in the childrens section as much as I don't want "Where do babies come from?" to have pictures.
There is a middle ground. Perhaps the books that would be inappropriate for a child to read alone, but okay with an adult there to explain it should be in a section that requires a parent to check it out for said child.
Like a PG-13 movie - how's about allowing for a little parental guidance without raping the 1st amendment?
It allows us parents a "choice". I know the Left is very stingy with giving "choice" to issues not involving the pelvis but tough shit.
That's my $.02 - be kind. I'm a mother not a nut!
Rosemary Esmay:
I agree with you. I'm a father. I know how you feel.
I felt that way too.
Then I found out (or remembered, actually) that what my kids were hearing from their CLASSMATES in the schoolyard was far more objectionable (and inaccurate) than what they were being taught in class.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. What's a parent to do?
Casey:
You said: "anyone objecting to any given proposal on this is automatically placed in the 'insensitive, child-hating clod' category."
Stop exaggerating.
And stop being so defensive. It makes people think you have reason to be defensive.
GTS
I learned countless things in the schoolyard that weren't true. Like all kids, I didn't always believe the teachers and adults when they contradicted that. I also sometimes learned that sometimes what adults and teachers taught me was false.
As I got older, I learned for myself how to unlearn falsehoods.
Smart parents will try to talk to their kids, especially about things that can hurt them.
When reading such stories, I wonder where having oneself not be excluded leaves off and where ramming one's own viewpoint down other's throats begins. There is a line between a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of the minority. The court system in America appears to me to increasingly support the tyranny of the minority.
We obviously need tort reform in America to stop this accretion. More people simply use the court system to impose their beliefs on others. This entangles our court system with trivial lawsuits to no end.
One way to approach Rosemary’s conundrum is to win elections. If you win elections, you can then control all appointments to the library board. The library board can then prioritize book purchases according to literary merit. The library board can then prioritize these quasi-pornographic books to the bottom of any purchase list since they have the least literary merit rendering their purchase impossible.
Some people are gay?
I'm guessing that you are saying people are born gay and that its not a learned behavior? Obviously then molestation has no effect on a persons sexual preference and rape or other forms of sexual abuse will not influence a person's sexual tastes. This runs directly contrary to my communications with gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals. There is generally a history, a trauma, then the onset of sexual addiction with a noted absence of any firm relationship with Jesus Christ in a manner that controls their addiction. Our Supreme Court now struggles with the fact that likelihood of homosexual or lesbian experience increases with the time spent in modern jail facilities .. How could something that your born with increase do to your environment? Homosexuality as drunkeness is a learned behavior that can be devestatinly addictive. Portraying it as anything but deviant denies the person in need of support and help in over coming the addiction.