The Special Shelves
I've spent a considerable recent portion of my county taxpayer-funded work hours as a morally treasonous tool of the local Christian fascists. In essence, I made our county safer for families by helping them be more afraid of homosexuals.
Thanks to threats from our state legislators and our library commission's spineless genuflection to homophobes, we are now branding certain books with a sort of scarlet letter and ghetto-izing them to separate shelves. My own part in this has been to re-categorize enough books to surround the three or four specifically scarlet-lettered ones so this special section won't reveal itself for what it really is--i.e., the Homo Section. We've found enough mildly controversial material about puberty or guns or teen pregnancy or breast-feeding (those La Leche harlots better watch the hell out) to basically camoflage the few actual "gay books" that the local snake-handlers deemed too immoral for the children of our town to encounter. You know, like the books that suggest maybe you really shouldn't beat the hell out of queers. Controversial stuff like that.
This is, to be sure, a more subtle method than a good, old-fashioned book-burning, so I guess this brand of fascists has just learned to be sneakier in their methods. As I'm applying the special sticker to these books and clicking the button on the computer that sends them to the special shelf that has to be a certain number of inches high to "protect the children," have I become a collaborator in this pro-family values witch hunt? I'm considering a guerrilla campaign of quietly, sneakily re-categorizing and re-shelving some really controversial, dangerous, morally questionable, violent, pornograpic material like, say, the Bible. This blog is anonymous, right?
Thanks to threats from our state legislators and our library commission's spineless genuflection to homophobes, we are now branding certain books with a sort of scarlet letter and ghetto-izing them to separate shelves. My own part in this has been to re-categorize enough books to surround the three or four specifically scarlet-lettered ones so this special section won't reveal itself for what it really is--i.e., the Homo Section. We've found enough mildly controversial material about puberty or guns or teen pregnancy or breast-feeding (those La Leche harlots better watch the hell out) to basically camoflage the few actual "gay books" that the local snake-handlers deemed too immoral for the children of our town to encounter. You know, like the books that suggest maybe you really shouldn't beat the hell out of queers. Controversial stuff like that.
This is, to be sure, a more subtle method than a good, old-fashioned book-burning, so I guess this brand of fascists has just learned to be sneakier in their methods. As I'm applying the special sticker to these books and clicking the button on the computer that sends them to the special shelf that has to be a certain number of inches high to "protect the children," have I become a collaborator in this pro-family values witch hunt? I'm considering a guerrilla campaign of quietly, sneakily re-categorizing and re-shelving some really controversial, dangerous, morally questionable, violent, pornograpic material like, say, the Bible. This blog is anonymous, right?
posted by DaysOfOurLibrary at 10:59 AM
1 Comments:
Even more insidious, they'll send their minions to check to books out and never return them, thus ensuring that for weeks at a time, the materials are unavailable to the user. The censors are getting more technologically savvy.
Post a Comment
<< Home