'Baby Be-Bop': Burning a gay book?
Why a group in Wisconsin is suing for permission to publicly torch a gay teen novel
To burn, or not to burn
(Corbis)
Nothing like a good book burning to stir up a debate on free expression, said Alison Flood in the Guardian. A group of Christians in Wisconsin is suing for the "right to publicly burn a copy of" Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, a gay teen coming-of-age novel. The lawsuit comes after a court threw out a request by a West Bend, Wisc., group to pull books they deemed to be sexually explicit off of library shelves.
It's hard to believe "we are still plagued by book burning religious zealots" in the 21st century, said Micha Jaystone in Examiner.com. At least this campaign by some West Bend, Wisc., scolds to "restrict access to teenage books they deemed sexually explicit" was tossed out of court recently—hopefully, this "frivolous" book-burning lawsuit will be, too.
Nobody wants to ban legitimate literature, said the West Bend citizens blog Wisconsin Speaks Up. We're simply asking "for a balance of information and simple identification of sexually explicit books for minors." In fact, "religion, morality, politics, even pornography, have little to do with this matter"—we just want to "protect" our children "from inappropriate material in the public library."
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7 Comments
Posted by Jason Dye, Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 2:13 pm These are two different groups, right? One is suing for its dumbheaded right to burn books it deems offensive. But there is no quote from the group explaining its rationale in this article, even though the title leads us to believe that's what the article is about. Simple equation though, Burning books stupid, pigheaded but free expression. Banning books censorship no free expression. They're not the same thing.
Posted by Jason Dye, Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 2:16 pm Since the equal sign is apparently not allowed, I should restate.Burning books is stupid and pigheaded, but is free expression. Banning books is censorship which is directly opposed to free expression.
Posted by geopho, Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 11:44 pm Reading a book about homosexuals won't turn a kid into a gay anymore than reading the Bible will. This group of Christians just shot themselves in the foot by bringing added attention to the subject. Kids will read this just to see what all the hubbub is about. Get a grip. If parents are concerned about their child being adversly affected from the gaining of knowledge, they didn't do their 'home'work.
Posted by bob dole, Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 2:12 pm Great, they're concerned about sexaully explicit books falling into the hands of kids. In what conceivable way does burning a copy of one have any impact on that? whoever thought of this is living in an alternate reality. Remember when people burned Beatles records in the mid60s? How well did that turn out for them??
Posted by Keyth Sokol, Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 5:14 pm Well, many Christians supposedly believe they have to testify or something or other when they see something they were taught is wrong. If they don't denounce it, then they are accepting it, and that would mean their own ticket to Heaven is in jeopardy. The author Nathaniel Frank spoke of this on a radio program about his book Unfriendly Fire. In short, such people will never listen to our reasoning because they are following something they truly believe they must. Reasons is sacrificed to their closeminded arrogance. Such bigots.
Posted by Christopher Waldrop, Sunday, June 28, 2009, 6:05 pm The worst part of this is that the book is not sexually explicit even though it's described as such. Yes, it is about a young man discovering he's gay and trying to deal with that. However there is no sex in the book.
Posted by Malaysian, Thursday, July 23, 2009, 12:01 am Practice of religion is good, however, placing too much reliance on one religion, till the stage of ignorance of fact and norms, is not encouraged nowadays.
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