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rdI was listening to a radio talk show last night while my husband and I were driving home in separate cars (long story). I heard something so ridiculous that I had to call my husband just to vent about it, and he started yelling that he'd heard it too and tried to call me to make the very point I'd wanted to make to him. So it's not just me, this really is a Use Your Brain moment.
The show is basically a radio advice column, mostly for women having boyfriend troubles. For some reason the host brought up banned books and noted that the most frequently banned book is And Tango Makes Three (which she mistakenly referred to as "And Then There Were Three"). She described the story of two male penguins in the San Francisco Zoo who formed a pair bond, though she neglected to mention the egg they hatched (the eponymous Tango). After admitting that she hasn't personally read the book, she went on to make several more comments ranging from simply wrong to utterly stupid. I'll describe the idiocy in chronological order, quoting exactly what she said to the best of my recollection.
The purpose of the book is to "teach about homosexuality." Well, no, the purpose of the book is to highlight a cute and unusual pair of penguins who adopted a penguin chick that was not biologically related to either of them. Co-author Justin Richardson said to the NYTimes in 2005, "We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families. It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks." Yes, same-sex parents are most often involved in a homosexual relationship, but the fact of the parenting is what is highlighted, not the homosexuality of the parents.
The reason the book has been banned from libraries is its "explicit content." Uh, not really. It's the thematic content rather than portrayals of gay penguin sex that has inspired requests to exclude the book from library catalogues. According to a representative from the American Library Association, "The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't agree with that."
"Homosexuality is purely a sex issue." WHAT? Wait, WHAT?
Okay, assuming for a second that gender is binary (it isn't) and the only two options for sexuality are hetero and homo (they aren't), even granting that the percentage of homo in the population is quite small compared to hetero (of course it is, no one is disputing that), why would homosexuality be a "sex issue" if heterosexuality isn't? Is the radio host claming that same-sex couples do not pair bond and raise families? Well of course they do, both humans and penguins, as noted in the book she is discussing. Is she saying that all pair-bonding is primarily a sex issue? In that case, children too young to understand sexuality shouldn't learn about heterosexual couples either. If homosexuality was purely a sex issue, why would the current legislation for gay partnership benefits, gay family protection, and gay marriage be such hot topics? Gays could just have sex and live their lives without partners. Why would anyone assume that gays don't have the same basic human need for companionship and family as straight people?
I could go off on a further rant about how sexuality (hetero and homo) often manifests in children as young as grade school and the concept of children being "too young" to understand same-sex partnerships is freakin' ridiculous (the very first stories we tell are fairy tales about a prince and a princess "and they all lived happily ever after" - are they too young for that? no? then they're not too young for King and King, another book that has sparked debate), but that's shading farther into the controversial than I'd like this blog to be, so I'll skip it for now.
Did you really think it was okay to discuss a book that you haven't read and make gross generalizations about that book and a large segment of the population based on little or no information? Have you no common sense whatsoever? KIM IVERSON, USE YOUR BRAIN.
The show is basically a radio advice column, mostly for women having boyfriend troubles. For some reason the host brought up banned books and noted that the most frequently banned book is And Tango Makes Three (which she mistakenly referred to as "And Then There Were Three"). She described the story of two male penguins in the San Francisco Zoo who formed a pair bond, though she neglected to mention the egg they hatched (the eponymous Tango). After admitting that she hasn't personally read the book, she went on to make several more comments ranging from simply wrong to utterly stupid. I'll describe the idiocy in chronological order, quoting exactly what she said to the best of my recollection.
The purpose of the book is to "teach about homosexuality." Well, no, the purpose of the book is to highlight a cute and unusual pair of penguins who adopted a penguin chick that was not biologically related to either of them. Co-author Justin Richardson said to the NYTimes in 2005, "We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families. It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks." Yes, same-sex parents are most often involved in a homosexual relationship, but the fact of the parenting is what is highlighted, not the homosexuality of the parents.
The reason the book has been banned from libraries is its "explicit content." Uh, not really. It's the thematic content rather than portrayals of gay penguin sex that has inspired requests to exclude the book from library catalogues. According to a representative from the American Library Association, "The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't agree with that."
"Homosexuality is purely a sex issue." WHAT? Wait, WHAT?
Okay, assuming for a second that gender is binary (it isn't) and the only two options for sexuality are hetero and homo (they aren't), even granting that the percentage of homo in the population is quite small compared to hetero (of course it is, no one is disputing that), why would homosexuality be a "sex issue" if heterosexuality isn't? Is the radio host claming that same-sex couples do not pair bond and raise families? Well of course they do, both humans and penguins, as noted in the book she is discussing. Is she saying that all pair-bonding is primarily a sex issue? In that case, children too young to understand sexuality shouldn't learn about heterosexual couples either. If homosexuality was purely a sex issue, why would the current legislation for gay partnership benefits, gay family protection, and gay marriage be such hot topics? Gays could just have sex and live their lives without partners. Why would anyone assume that gays don't have the same basic human need for companionship and family as straight people?
I could go off on a further rant about how sexuality (hetero and homo) often manifests in children as young as grade school and the concept of children being "too young" to understand same-sex partnerships is freakin' ridiculous (the very first stories we tell are fairy tales about a prince and a princess "and they all lived happily ever after" - are they too young for that? no? then they're not too young for King and King, another book that has sparked debate), but that's shading farther into the controversial than I'd like this blog to be, so I'll skip it for now.
Did you really think it was okay to discuss a book that you haven't read and make gross generalizations about that book and a large segment of the population based on little or no information? Have you no common sense whatsoever? KIM IVERSON, USE YOUR BRAIN.
