Banned Books Week and "most challenged titles" of 2008!

This week is Banned Books Week in the United States. Sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), American Booksellers Association, and a variety of other organizations, the week of events around the country celebrates intellectual freedom and spotlights books that have been targets of attempting bannings. According to the ALA, there were more than 500 "challenges" to specific books in schools, stores, and libraries reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008. And probably many, many more that went unreported. And Tango Makes Three was apparently the biggest target. It's a true story about a same-sex penguin couple in New York's Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to raise. Without further ado, here are the top ten "most challenged titles" of last year. I linked to the Amazon page for each so you can collect them all or buy copies for your local library or school!

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
 Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group

2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
 Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence

3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
 Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

4. Scary Stories (series) , by Alvin Schwartz
 Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence

5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
 Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence

6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
 Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group

7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
 Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
 Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group

9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
 Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
 Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

For more, see the Banned Books Week site and the ALA's Banned Books Week pages.

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Anonymous

If you click on one of these links to Amazon, and scroll down to “Customers who bought this book also bought…” You’ll see the other books on this list! Nice going!
Powell

“political viewpoint”? According to who?
Why not stamp it “THOUGHTCRIME” and be done with it.
Anonymous

I checked the 1 star reviews for Bless Me, Ultima on Amazon, and a disproportionate amount come from children from Las Vegas with only 1 review to their name. I wonder if a Vegas pastor didn’t have his whole Sunday school class pen scathing reviews of it.
Didn’t check any other book on the list; did anyone notice anything similar with the other titles?
JamesMason

At a recent bookfair at my daughter’s middle school, one parent said he didn’t like the “clique” books – he didn’t think they were appropriate. When I asked why, he said he didn’t like the idea of cliques, and the kids shouldn’t talk about them. I was thinking wtf? but then suggested to him that it might be a good idea to talk about them and realize what they are, etc., because it’s not like they magically go away when you grow up.

We go to the same church and are friends, but we’re not in the same clique. He didn’t get it.
nosehat

Books can be banned for having a religious viewpoint? Seems like the fundies are opening a real can of worms with that one.

The only reason for banning a book that’s at all rational on this list is “unsuited for age group.” But how could that possibly apply to The Kite Runner, which is marketed for adults?
Baldhead

Oddly, whenever I see a book referred to as “not appropriate to age group” I tend to think that the age group it’s declared “not appropriate” for is precisely who should be reading it, as it probably addresses some of the main concerns that age group has. Kids are usually older than their parents want to believe. Seventeen isn’t read by 17- year olds, but 14- year olds. The 17- year olds are reading Cosmo.
SamSam

Wait, they banned a book because of “nudity?”

How can a text-based book have nudity in it? Ascii-porn perhaps?

Oh wait! One of the characters was probably naked at some point!!! Oh noes! Teh childrens might imagine what the character looks like nekked!
Anonymous

The map is especially good:

http://bannedbooksweek.org/Mapofbookcensorship.html
Phrosty

@ #1 ArbitraryAardvark: Editing is a form of censorship. Just a heads-up.
Anonymous

JUST finished reading the ‘His dark materials’ trilogy (#2). I loved it! But, I must admit, I was intending to take the second book (The Subtle Knife) up to the desk in the library because I really don’t think it should be in the junior section, but in the teen section with the other 2 books.

There’s some pretty graphic violence, children smashing other children in the temple with metal pipes etc. and some raunchy bits, although thinly veiled with symbolism (soft monkey hands caressing snakes and so forth).

But then I suppose a child that wasn’t up to reading it would probably be weeded out by the writing style?
Powell

@SAMSAM, good catch.
“What nudity is mentioned in the text!? you are shitting me right? BAN THE HELL OUT OF IT!!!”
Jackasimov

I haven’t read it but how is Kite Runner “unsuited to age group”? It’s not a young adult title to my knowledge.
The Unusual Suspect

Or how about:

1. The Holy Bible, by Medieval Peasants Presuming to Speak for Creation

â€¨Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, political viewpoint, anti-ethnic, homosexuality, violence, suicide, offensive language and sexually explicit.
hjayala

As a teacher, the issue to me is not banning books, it is appropriateness of books. I had an 11-year-old student bring in a very “explicit” book for “DEAR” (Drop Everthing And Read)time. That book passed under each of the students’ desks like a brush fire. By the time I found out about the book, kids had been copying things out of, drawing pictures of some of its content and so forth. I kept the book and asked the parent to come in and pick it up. She said she was upset that I was censoring what her child was reading and to just give it back to her. Another parent contacted the school and said I was allowing children in my class to read pornography. Only because I cofiscated the book did I NOT get “in trouble”.

Trash or treasure? Just don’t be reckless with either.
runwithskizzers

shoot I meant to sign in earlier – you can deny the comment that says this exact thing that’s going to come in on the cue. Anyhow:

Neil Gaiman tweeted about a librarian’s response to a parent’s concern over “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” earlier today – I have to say, it is amazing. Linked here:

http://jaslarue.blogspot.com/2008/07/uncle-bobbys-wedding.html
hhype

I agree with #1, arbitraryaardvark, these books are easily available. In fact posting them here has probably given them a boost. Can you really stop people from finding and reading what they want these days?

Even totalitarian regimes have trouble restricting books these days.

ALA has been blaring the “bannned” book trumpet a lot these days and the thoughtful responses I have seen are typically the disbelief that anyone really can restrict the access to a challenged book. What they don’t tell you is that almost all of these challenges fail.

I don’t think I have the right to decide what you read. I have the responsibility to know what my kids will read, but I will probably read it with them, and teach them and let them develop their own judgement and critical facilities.
Brainspore

Fred H #30:

I read an interview with the zookeeper at the NY zoo where the 2 males had adopted the orphan chick. He said that penguins just tend to adopt. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, and he thought all the furor was funny.

That particular pair acted like a bonded couple for years (including having penguin sex) before and after they were given the chick to adopt by zoo staff. It has everything to do with homosexuality and the ignorant people who say it’s “unnatural” because it “doesn’t occur in the animal kingdom.”

Or, you know, maybe they were just confused since all penguins look pretty much the same. (Yes, that part was a joke).
Kibble

I’m not in favor of banning books.

That begin said, the “Gossip Girl” series is junk. School library space and budgets are limited. I hope they can do better than that.
Antinous / Moderator

Good lord. We were reading Tennessee Williams in middle school back in my day. And yes, I turned into a drug-addled, communist drag queen, but at least I knew what pitfalls to avoid on the way.
Moriarty

Nudity is clearly sinful, and consequently so is bathing. I had to remove that disgusting socialist/atheist “shower” from my home, because the liberals made sure I couldn’t find a home without one, so they can turn my kids gay. “Daddy, why do I smell different than the other kids?” That’s what they ask me. How is a father supposed to answer that?
Brainspore

A little off-topic, but the gay penguins that inspired that first book sadly had a falling out with one pursuing a short-lived relationship with a female partner.
IronEdithKidd

I just read the letter that Runwithskizzors links to. Wow. What a measured, thoughtful response to what was very likely a knee-jerk “the library is turning my kid gay” complaint.

The funny thing about the challenged books list is the number of those books that I was required to read (out of the classics list, anyway) in various public school classes.
cognitive dissonance

@ BRAINSPORE

i’m pretty sure that FRED H is correct, and that no one ever actually saw the male penguins having sex, just mimicking the mating rituals.

and if memory serves me right, one of the penguins went off and mated with a female soon after.

i’m all for ending censorship, and book banning itself should be a crime, but i do resent the fact that this book of cuddly animals is being taught to kids under the pretense that it’s a true story of homosexual penguins in a life long relationship… when it’s not.
Dan Burdick

In Oregon the Eugene Public Library observes Banned Book Week, naturally – has exhibits, has a a speaker.

I wrote on a comment form to there that they are displaying what might be characterized as old books such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Grapes of Wrath, Howl. That this suggests that people in Eugene could come up with other insightful books of a more contemporary nature.

Aleksandr Solzhenitzen author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has written a new book which is amazingly being banned in the West! “Together For Two Hundred Years” came out circa 2000 and no English-speaking publisher has published it. It seems that this New Solzhenitsyn book has only been issued in the Russian language!

Other ideas that I might contribute for showing some modern thought with our library display, with some locally thought up contributions,

Eustace Mullin’s, Murder by Injection: The Story of the Medical Conspiracy Against America.

Farewell America 1968 by “James Hepburn” (pseudonym) and William Turner
– a “look at John Kennedy’s assassination and an excoriation of the American scene in its aftermath”
“was “aimed at advancing the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy,” but its U.S. distribution was rapidly curtailed after RFK’s death.”

“PSYCHIATRISTS: THE MEN BEHIND HITLER” is at the neighboring town Junction City Library. It may not be banned as such. After ww2 there were thousands of books, rare or non-existent were the one’s, including large Histories, that covered topics such as the Ultra Rich (the Rockefellers, Warburgs etc.) funding and participating on both sides, the holocaust starting with people thousands selected by Psychiatric “Doctors,”
There were decades when authoritative books on WW2 did not mention, “Fritz Thyssen” “Prescott Bush” “Roland Harriman” “J.D. Rockefeller.”

What books do you think should be added to round out Huck Fynn? The Solzhenitzen book is a winner! Everybody loved and published him for decades, and Now, one of his last books comes out and it doesn’t get mentioned or publiched!! It is completely strange.
AirPillo

You want to ensure her ideas die out in the next generation, make fourteen-year-olds read the book.

I shouldn’t drink coffee and read comments, I nearly spat it on my monitor, hah.
LavenderNotes

To those commenters who think the threat of banned books is a non-threat, you must not live in the sticks.

I do, and for many, many people, the library (or the library delivery service) is the ONLY access to books. If crazy-ass fundamentals (and gay penguin haters) get their way and ban some of these books from the library, they will effectively be banned for many people in my community.

And not to be a slippery slope type of person, but once a book is banned from a school or library, it’s that much easier to get it taken out of Barnes & Noble or Borders. You say Internet access? For many people in my community, the library is their only Internet access… what if the crazies ensure you can’t buy banned books over the Internet at the library?

See where this is going? Censorship in ANY flavor tastes very bad.
querent

@1 I respectfully disagree with extreme prejudice.

To quote Rage Against the Machine, “They don’t gotta burn a book they just remove em.”

I grew up in a backwoods village in south mississippi. 1984 was banned from my high school, supposedly b/c of the sex scene, and our right wing (borderline libertarian) poly sci teacher raised hell. he won my heart.

free speech, sure. censorship here is a matter of emphasis. like net neutrality. we get gently sheepherded (sp?) into the channels they’ve chosen for us.

like…you can read independent journalists accounts of gaza earlier this year, but no one’s shouting it at you. they don’t have the pentagon’s pr budget behind them. to cite a similar situation.

@ 17, Antinous

pure awesomeness. god bless and be well.
Brainspore

@ Cognitive Dissonance:

If by “soon after” you mean “after six years of paired behavior,” then yes. In fact I brought up their breakup myself way back in post #19.

Penguins don’t generally mate for life regardless of gender preference, so in that case you’re correct. But the story is a true case of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom, so on that front it makes a very valid counterpoint to the people who call gays “unnatural.”
Zadaz

Are Tangos parents named Whiskey and Foxtrot?

I’m curious about the “anti-ethnic” in that story. And how a story about a family can be “anti-family”.

Oh, wait, it’s a religious thing.

I still don’t get it, but at least I get why I don’t get it.

As asinine as it is I can see why people might limit what books kids have access too. (I read several of the Fear and Loathing books at a ‘tween and I’ll be damned if I knew what they were about.) Besides, once we’re adults we can buy what books we ant, right?

Oh wait, not in my home town. The bookstore went out of business and WalMart moved in. And there are a lot of books Walmart simply won’t carry. (Like the super controversial John Stewart’s “America”. Is it because he’s Jewish?)
Anonymous

@31/orwellian

It wasn’t Atlas Shrugged, but they DID make us read some Ayn Rand when I was 14. Ugh. Haven’t read a bit of Rand since then, and I read books every day!
Anonymous

Too little too late, but let’s be honest here: parentage *is* adoption.

Women give birth, and thus have a relationship to their offspring that is arguably closer than that of men, and yet some abandon their children too.

So if over 50% of parents do not give birth, then parenting is a choice. Adoptive parents are equal parents.

And parenting is a basic drive. Any surprise that the drive is fulfilled under unusual circumstances?

As for homosexuality, some people prefer it, some are opportunistic, some don’t.

Sometimes I think the problem with this discussion is fatherhood. So many women raise children alone, yet when a man tries to parent with another man, all hell breaks loose!
Anonymous

It’s also important to note that not everyone can afford to go to Barnes and Noble/Borders/local bookstores and buy books. Yes, I’m aware of used and closeout bookstores, but those aren’t quite as common as regular-price bookstores (the closed used bookshop is about 90 minutes away from my town).

Anywoo, take for example Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. One, the publisher waited almost two years to to put out the paperback version. The hardcover would run (at full retail) about 35 bucks. It got pretty heavily discounted upon it’s release and could be had for 20 bucks or so, but still, not everyone could afford to spend 20 bucks on a book. The paper back is between 10 and 15 bucks, so cheaper, but might still be difficult for people on a budget.

Books are wonderful things and libraries are a way for anyone to be exposed to books (and the ideas contained within them).
zantony

ALA has been blaring the “bannned” book trumpet a lot these days and the thoughtful responses I have seen are typically the disbelief that anyone really can restrict the access to a challenged book. What they don’t tell you is that almost all of these challenges fail.

Actually, ALA does tell you that most challenges fail. In fact, they are rather proud of that. From the ALA page on Banned Books Week:

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

Banned Books Week exists to raise awareness. For every challenge that succeeds in a ban, there are many more challenges that fail. Bans garner news attention, but unsuccessful challenges often do not. Challenges fail because people oppose them. It is an ongoing struggle.

Honestly, nobody would be happier than the librarians if all of the challenges suddenly stopped. They have plenty of other things they would much rather be doing. But that day hasn’t come yet.
cognitive dissonance

@ BRAINSPORE

Yes, by soon after, I meant soon after the timeline of the book, which was apparently six years.

And the story is absolutely not a true case of homosexual behavior, because it’s been clarified, that there was no “sex” involved. It’s made very clear in any book or course on psychobiology that there is not a single instance of homosexual intercourse elsewhere in the animal kingdom.

Homosexuality is a phenomenon unique to humans, but so are a lot of things.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  cognitive dissonance,
  
  Provide citations.
Fred H

Brainspore @19,
I don’t know if you’re kidding, but I had to write a report in college about the ALA, censorship, and “And Tango…” I read an interview with the zookeeper at the NY zoo where the 2 males had adopted the orphan chick. He said that penguins just tend to adopt. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, and he thought all the furor was funny.
orwellian

I’m a conservative and think censorship is wrong. The antidote for bad ideas isn’t censorship but more speech. Conservatives hate much of PC because someone else decides what ideas and views are allowed to be discussed. To turn around and ban a book because it disagrees with conservative beliefs is mind-boggling stupid. I want libraries to carry both ‘The Nation’ and ‘National Review’. NPR and Rush both belong on the radio. I think Olberman is a moron but would never boycott any advertiser because they run ads on his show.

The two things that seems most banned were references to homosexuality and sex in general (though the occult was up there). They’re there, they’re queer, get used to it. It’s not catching. And wanting to worry about sex text is kinda cute in an era where anyone can download hot panda lovin’ for free (not that theres anything wrong with that). Might as well ban calculators because they can type 5318008 and turn it upside down. Feel free to point that out to the censors.

As to the occult, if your kid think that reciting pig latin into a mirror will bind a demon to their dark desires, they can read but they are still stupid. Most of the ‘occult’ they talk about is Harry Potter fantasy. I read the Satanic bible and it was some of the worst writing I’ve ever suffered through. Good drugs and bad sex do not a religion make.

@RedRichie; I’ve read Atlas Shrugged. Some good ideas in it but the woman couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag. I dare you to read ten pages without wincing. I heard the audio book is considered a crime against humanity. You want to ensure her ideas die out in the next generation, make fourteen-year-olds read the book.
Anonymous

Something doesn’t really make sense. This stuff happens in real life yet we want to ban it in books. Ban all that controversial language and topics in a book and it will still be there. Ever heard of a TV or the Internet? And I’m doing a project in school about censorship(I’m in the media center right now)and after my research it strikes me that these people are paranoid. And with the Tango book, it happened in real life so if you ban that then you’re trying to ban reality, which is impossible.
cognitive dissonance

@ #46

I was not intending to make the “therefore, LOOK NO GAY PENGUINS POINT,” and the absence of them having homosexual sex in the first place, would not make either of the penguins “BISEXUAL” just a normal one, and one who, I presume, is still a virgin.

I’m unaware at what point in the “relationship” that the book was written, but the fact that one went on to have an unspectacular, heterosexual life in captivity was conveniently left out of the book.

and BRAINSPORE, I would not be so unapologetically adamant that the trait is unique to human if I hadn’t been so universally accepted in science, and taught as such in both levels of psychobiology back in college. I could not be any more supportive of their cause, and if anything, i wouldn’t like them basing their argument for being as “it happens in nature” when it just doesn’t. It’s as good a argument as the anti-gay movement has in “it says so in the bible” or the more hilarious “it was adam and eve, not adam and steve”

The explanation was that the same-sex intercourse was typically a display of power, much like in prison, or as vulgar war-tactic, and represented no sexual or intimate relationship. The instances didn’t constitute lasting relationships, and the “gay” animals in question almost always were in a hetero relationship prior to and/or after the act witnessed.

It’s more convenient to say that it has, which I always assumed until I learned it at university.

i suppose i just get weary about trying to introduce life lessons to kids under the guise of true stories and cuddly creatures.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  cognitive dissonance,
  
  You’ve made sweeping statements about the absence of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom. And you haven’t provided any citations yet.
Brainspore

@cognitive dissonance #50:

I would not be so unapologetically adamant that the trait is unique to human if I hadn’t been so universally accepted in science, and taught as such in both levels of psychobiology back in college.

As Glittertrash has already pointed out that claim is hardly “universally accepted in science,” and as Antinous has twice noted out you have yet to provide any citations.

i suppose i just get weary about trying to introduce life lessons to kids under the guise of true stories and cuddly creatures.

What’s wrong with using true stories of cuddly creatures to teach life lessons to children? It sure beats the hell out of using ignorant lies to teach intolerance.
angrypaladin

As a fish that lives it’s whole life in water has no concept of ‘the ocean’, the ALA banned books week is intended as a celebration of the liberties of expression and reading that we enjoy (and perhaps take for granted) in modern society. It’s a reminder that without our modern liberties, these books would probably end up in a heliocentric bonfire of ghoulish glee. And, in the spirit of delicious irony, this is also a publicity bump for those books and authors that are challenged.

For my part, I loved reading all of the ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ books when I was in elementary school, and look forward to going to the local bookstore to get fresh, new copies.

(Though I will admit, after finishing Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’ I may be slightly tempted to whistle and look away sheepishly if any kindling voices of protest should be raised in the name of that book.)
glittertrash

@COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Actually, you’re completely wrong about that one. Animals of the same sex get it on ALL THE TIME. It is extremely well documented, but not especially widely known, because people (including biologists) are peculiarly attached to the “homosexuality is a uniquely human, therefor somehow unnatural, behaviour” meme. There was a great documentary a few years ago that interviewed a bunch of biologists expressing both their shock at the undeniable evidence of homosexual behaviour in animals, and a whole lot of human-society influenced prejudice that meant that they left observations of those behaviours out of their field reports. One said something like, in reference to a breed of mountain goats that enjoyed boy-on-boy goat frotting, “I just couldn’t bring myself to believe that these beautiful, noble animals were… queers”. Telling statement, that.

So, have a look at this National Geographic article:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal.html

Also, this Wikipedia list of animal species that have been documented to display same-sex sexual behaviour and/or pair-bonding behaviour:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior

Human beings did not invent homosex. We just like to think that we did.

The argument that Tango’s adoptive parents broke up and one sought female companionship, therefor LOOK NO GAY PENGUINS, is a pretty hilarious one. If anything, it’s an argument for LOOK, BISEXUAL PENGUINS! I don’t see how it disqualifies them from serving as adorable role-models in a kid’s book about different family structures.
lennyd44

Banned for religious viewpoint?

How about Bible?
Phoenicks

lolarious

They ban these books but then teach the bible in Sunday school with helpful pictures of a dying/dead man on a cross bleeding profusely while saying “He did it for you kids, because you’re bad and he needed to die in order to make it all better again.” Because THAT’S age appropriate.

Conservatives. They make me chuckle.
Teller

Ban complaints, then?

Seems like things get worked out between complainers and purveyors. Free to read; free to object. Sign me up for both.
FoetusNail

Prudes, still holding their finger in the dyke? One day they’ll be left wearing a little ring of stone.
cognitive dissonance

@ ANTINOUS

well i apologize that i don’t have all of my college textbooks at my ready disposal, but i thought that clarifying that any documented same-sex intercourse (almost exclusively male) was an assertion of power, which is also present in the human species in prisons, and as a war tactic. i didn’t make a sweeping claim that documented same sex intercourse never happened, merely that it was falsely assumed it constituted a relationship.

a sympathize with your request for hard evidence, as i would expect the same from any other claim i felt was “sweeping” but at this second, i suppose all i can offer is a new perspective, and one i don’t feel is terribly outlandish or less than possible.

besides, an argument that “animals do it!” isn’t a terribly good excuse for anything. as if we as humans need to seek vindication for equal rights for all lifestyles in the sexual trysts of penguins? because us being more evolved, and understanding isn’t reason enough to justify same-sex relationships?

well you know what? it must not be “indecent” to be naked. animals do it!
george57l

Editing is censorship? Even a time-served pedant like me finds that a bit much. So every time someone “edited” one of the sci-fi anthologies on my bookshelf, they were censoring, eh? Nice to know – thanks.
Brainspore

cognitive dissonance #53:

…i thought that clarifying that any documented same-sex intercourse (almost exclusively male) was an assertion of power, which is also present in the human species in prisons, and as a war tactic.

That’s not “clarification,” it’s repeating an unsupported claim which has already been debunked by the citations Glittertrash provided, among many other studies.

besides, an argument that “animals do it!” isn’t a terribly good excuse for anything.

Of course not, but it’s a clear counter-argument to the ignoramuses who claim homosexuality is “unnatural” or “exclusive to humans” on the grounds that animals don’t do it.
Anonymous

@ Cognitive Dissonance:

And the story is absolutely not a true case of homosexual behavior, because it’s been clarified, that there was no “sex” involved.

As someone who is in a long-term, monogamous, romantic, but (for reasons geographic and medical) non-sexual relationship with someone of the same sex, I am so relieved to learn that I’m not really a homosexual. Whew.

Also, you’ve never spent much time on a farm, have you?
Anonymous

@31
“NPR and Rush both belong on the radio”

True, but the former is news and the latter is entertainment. They are not equivalent.
redrichie

Yeah, I seem to remember reading somewhere that Bonobo Chimps display homosexual behaviours.

Fact: Chimps are awesome.
AirPillo

#36, context is key to that statement. It was in reply to this:

False claims of censorship annoy me.
Whether to include a book in a class reading list or even a library is a matter of editing, not of banning. Real censorship is a real problem.
Maybe there’s a problem about which books a library chooses to stock or a teaches chooses to assign, but let’s find an accurate word to describe that problem.

“Editing” a book out of a library’s collection and forbidding the library to stock it is most certainly censorship, as is forbidding schools from carrying it or teachers from teaching about it if they desire to. The latter happens pretty often, actually; at least compared to the former it does.

“Editing” when it refers to removing objectionable content from books is also censorship. Mark Twain’s books have been subjected to this in schools, most notably removal of a racial slur from the dialog of Huckleberry Finn
John

Both of my daughters, both adults now, were granted adult library cards at the local public library as soon as they stopped wreaking their own books. They both grew up to become what I call “readers.” They both still read books at a prodigious rate. One has her own blog, and the other believes personal blogs are too time-consuming.
arbitraryaardvark

False claims of censorship annoy me.
Whether to include a book in a class reading list or even a library is a matter of editing, not of banning. Real censorship is a real problem.
Maybe there’s a problem about which books a library chooses to stock or a teaches chooses to assign, but let’s find an accurate word to describe that problem.
redrichie

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/index.cfm

There’s probably something in the fact that many of the books that are challenged are the type of thing that would piss off small gummint, but socially conservative types.

Whereas the sort of thing, like Atlas Shrugged, that would piss off lefties has, apparently been left alone.

Or maybe there isn’t.
Anonymous

I completely agree, the idea that banning books still even exists is absurd. As for all the “unsuitable for age group” crap, I read a lot of those books at a young age (perks of being a wallflower and gossip girls series mainly) and wasn’t “scarred.” Now that I’m older, I understand a lot more of it, but when I was younger I didn’t think “Now I must go do drugs because I read it in a book.” I thought, wow the characters in this book are either a)older or b) messed up. Gossip girls series has its own problems, but I found Perks of Being a Wallflower to be one of the most educational (in a good way) and inspiring books of my youth.
Brainspore

Glittertrash, thanks for correcting Cognitive Dissonance’s astoundingly inaccurate claim that “Homosexuality is a phenomenon unique to humans.”

Of course the issue whether or not these penguins actually fornicated is all irrelevant to the book anyway since it’s about a same-sex couple raising an adopted offspring, not hardcore penguin sex.