if you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

So, I missed it. Apparently Banned Books week was September 23rd to the 30th. My mother wrote about it at a more appropriate time. I commented on her entry recently, and since I took off on a few tangents, I thought I should post them here as well.

First of all, for your education, the following is according to the American Library Association.

The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2005 are:

• “It’s Perfectly Normal” for homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion and being unsuited to age group;
• “Forever” by Judy Blume for sexual content and offensive language;
• “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger for sexual content, offensive language and being unsuited to age group;
• “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content and offensive language;
• “Whale Talk” by Chris Crutcher for racism and offensive language;
• “Detour for Emmy” by Marilyn Reynolds for sexual content;
• “What My Mother Doesn’t Know” by Sonya Sones for sexual content and being unsuited to age group;
• Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey for anti-family content, being unsuited to age group and violence;
• “Crazy Lady!” by Jane Leslie Conly for offensive language; and
• “It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families” by Robie H. Harris for sex education and sexual content.

Don’t you know? No one should be allowed to learn or talk about sexuality. Oh, and sexual situations? THOSE DON’T HAPPEN. Homosexuals? SO very scary. If we let them roam free they will infect Our Children with their sinful ways. If you read about sex, perhaps that will entice you to go try it out yourself… even better to do so without any education on the matter. There shalt be no guns or violence in our books, movies, or television shows. Children who play video games and listen to loud and obnoxious music shoot up schools. Ban all of that. Now, if you would like to speak on the side of the so-called “Moral Majority” then by all means, enjoy your First Amendments and Civil Liberties.

I am sure many who would like to ban guns from television and games are the same ones who swear they will die so they may keep the real killing tools. You know, “If God made every man, Sam Colt made them equal.”

Ugh.

Of course I’m being facetious. Still. It kind of scares me to know that a vast majority or those challenged books have something to do with sex. I don’t know nearly as much about societies other than this American one… but I never understood why sexuality is something that is never to be spoken of, written about, or seen in any way shape or form. How is it immoral to learn about your body?

More appropriately for this election season: how does a marriage between a man and a man denegrate a heterosexual marriage? How does that cheapen the sanctity of marriage when a projected 40 to 50 percent of heterosexual couples get divorced anyway?

The “problem” with a free and open society is that sometimes things you read may offend you or challenge your viewpoints. The beauty of said problem? You may turn right around and write or talk about how horrible those viewpoints, books or articles are. Nice, eh?

A rule of thumb for everyone should be to question everything, accept nothing. Listen sometimes, instead of talk. Learn about the things you do not know.

A real man isn’t the man with a gun– and only a real man can be a lover.

That is all.