Banned Books Week: And Tango Makes Three

I finished my two books for Banned Books Week earlier than I thought, so now I'll have more than one post in a day.  It's an Autumn miracle!


I read And Tango Makes Three and The Giver for Banned Books Week.  I'll start with And Tango Makes Three, and then I'll do a separate post on The Giver.

Photo courtesy of Goodreads.com

And Tango Makes Three is a children's picture book by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, and is illustrated by Henry Cole.  It's a true story about two male penguins who loved each other and together they raised a baby penguin from egg to birth and beyond.  It was published in 2005 and has been on the American Library Association's Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books List for each year beginning with 2006, and every year it has been in the number one slot, except for 2009, when it fell to number two.  The reasons that this book has been challenged have been listed on ALA's website as "unsuited to age group," "sexism," "anti-ethnic," "religious viewpoint," "anti-family," and "homosexuality."  Let's take these one-by-one, shall we?  Oy, this is going to turn into one of my infamous soapbox rants.  


So we'll start off with "unsuited to age group."  I'm not sure what the exact target age is for this book, but it's a children's picture book, so we'll say, um, birth to 8 and be generous?  I mean, kids don't actually read until they're 4 or 5 (unless parents do that Baby Can Read thing, which is a topic for another post, I think), but parents read to them.  And although I don't really read anything other than board books to my two-year-old son (he tears up the pages otherwise), many parents read these books to kids at all early ages, even while they're in the womb.  And by the time kids are 7 or 8 they're on to chapter books, I think.  I'm not sure exactly how this goes.  Give me a few years and I'll see what happens with my own son.  But anyway, it's a book for kids.  And yes, I can see how sexuality is not a subject that you really want to teach your kids until they're older.  But you can teach them about love, right?  Kids are taught about boys and girls liking each other, and thinking the other is cute; all that stuff is taught without a thought at a young age.  All that simply has to be said to teach homosexuality at a young age is that some boys like boys and some girls like girls.  Lots of people talk about the horrors of children learning about homosexuality in schools at a young age, and they always seem to think that this kind of talk has to include information about sex itself.  Sex doesn't come into the teaching of heterosexuality at a young age, so why should it come into the conversation when talking about homosexuality?  Besides, this book says nothing about the reproductive cycle except that the male and female penguin couples had babies of their own and Roy and Silo (the two male penguins) didn't, so their keeper gave them an egg to care for when it couldn't be cared for by its own parents.  I don't think this book is unsuited for the age group at all.


Next, "sexism."  How in the world is this sexist?  No, really, someone read this book and tell me how it's sexist.  I really don't know how it could be considered sexist.


As for "anti-ethnic," I really don't know what they're going with here.  There were people of all colors illustrated in this book as going to the zoo to see the animals.  I mean, there was only one type of penguin in the book, chinstrap penguins, but surely these people aren't claiming that it was anti-ethnic because there was only one kind of penguin represented?  I really don't know what anti-ethnic means, either.  But I found a funny blog post while looking this up:  And Tango Makes Three: anti-ethnic penguins?  They don't seem to know what it means, either.


"Religious viewpoint" is the next reason that this book has been challenged.  Now, does that mean that the book has an offensive religious viewpoint, or that the person who is challenging the book is saying that it is offensive to their own religious viewpoint?  It has to be the latter, because this book has no mention of religion in it whatsoever.  So I guess this person is basically saying that it has homosexuality in it, which is against their religious viewpoint.  Newsflash, people.  It's a free country.  And freedom of religion is one of the major freedoms in America.  Freedom to be whichever religion you wish, or to have no religion at all.  Your religion does not make the rules of this country.  No religion does.  So therefore, a book that does not go along with your religious viewpoint isn't going to be banned for that reason.  Sorry.


Moving on to "anti-family."  I wrote a whole post on this a year ago, aptly called Soapbox Rant.  Basically I talked about how many politicians talk about "family values" as if their opponents, or people in the other political party (they're Republicans talking about Democrats, mostly) don't have any type of family values.  It's quite ridiculous.  Just because some people don't limit a "family" to a marriage of one man and one woman and their biological children doesn't mean they don't have a sense of what family is, and it definitely doesn't mean that they don't have morals.  And Tango Makes Three is all about family.  It's about a not-so-typical penguin family, but the overwhelming, blatant theme in the book is family.  So this reason for challenging the book does not make sense at all.


And finally, we have "homosexuality."  Yep.  They're homosexual penguins.  So this reason makes sense, but I still think it's wrong.  First of all, banning books is wrong.  Decide for yourself what you want to read to your children.  If you don't like it, don't read it, and don't let your kids read it.  Second of all, the fact that something contains homosexuality does not make it bad.  You disagree with homosexuality?  I think you're going to have to get over it, because it's not going away.

Deep breath, rant over.  And Tango Makes Three is a sweet story about family and love.  The illustrations are cute, and the story itself is warm and fuzzy.  The fact that it is a true story makes it all the more wonderful.  I, for one, think we need more books like this for children, and I will definitely be reading it to my son (once he gets over that whole tearing-book-pages thing).

Love Conquers Hate: Write Every Day Challenge, Day #8

It's been a couple days since I posted a blog, but I still wrote in other ways, so the challenge continues!  Write Every Day, Day #8 - one week down!


First of all, I would like to make a little disclaimer.  I know that my opinions are just that:  my opinions.  We all have our own, and they are all a bit different.  In fact, that's what makes this world so interesting:  we are all different.  And the thing that makes the U.S.A. so wonderful is that we are free to state, discuss, and display our own opinions.  I know that I am a Democrat in a mostly Republican state and that many of my friends are Republican.  When I say "some Republicans" or "many Republicans," I don't mean all Republicans.  I don't wish to create enemies.  I also know that I don't know everything about politics and religion and things like that, and I do not claim to.  I will never claim to.  Actually, in my day-to-day life you might often hear me stating something, and then saying, "But I could be wrong," because I could be wrong, and I know it.  I am also mostly Agnostic, with a hint of the Lutheran religion mixed in (I was raised Lutheran), which is also not the norm in my state.  Christianity is big here.  But that's another wonderful thing about America:  our forefathers came to this country to escape religious persecution of any kind, and we now are free to worship as we wish.


And there's the rub.  I hear a lot of Christians speaking of Christianity as if it is The Religion in America.  It may be the most popular religion in America, but it is not the National Religion, like English is the National Language (and that's a whole different bag of opinions there, but I won't get into that).  Also, our government is not ruled by religion.  Many people base their daily lives on The Bible, and that is fine.  But The Bible is not our constitution.  It is not the rules of America.  It may be the rules to many people, and, like I said, that is fine.  But it does not govern us all.  It also may be the largest religion in the world (I looked this up - I thought that it wasn't the largest, but several sources showed that it was the largest, closely followed by Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Non-Religious/Secular/Atheist/Agnostic - not necessarily in that order.  But then again, these sources that I found may be old, biased, or simply wrong - or they may be correct.  They were all a tad different, though.) but it does not rule the world.


My whole post today stemmed from the fact that I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately, mostly about religion and homosexuality.  First I watched Jesus Camp (see my previous post, "Harry Potter and Jesus Camp," dated 09/10/10), which was about children attending an Evangelical camp which "trained" them to be soldiers of God and where the adults preached to them not only about The Bible, but about how Harry Potter is evil(@#$!), and inundated them with Pro-Life propaganda.  Then, yesterday, I watched two documentaries about the war between Christianity and homosexuals:  Fall From Grace and One Nation Under God (1993).


Fall From Grace follows Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and his family as they attend church, spend time together, and picket events like the funeral of an American soldier who died in combat (I think it was in Iraq).  There are so may things to say about this.  I have known about Mr. Phelps ever since one of my friends called me one night in high school, crying and severely shaken up, telling me to call a certain phone number.  I called the number and was greeted with a recording of a pastor speaking yelling about "fags" and "niggers" (two words which I never use, and only use here as quotes) and how they're all going to hell.  Then, about a year later, I heard of the story of Matthew Shepard, and how Mr. Phelps and members of his congregation were picketing Matthew's funeral.  A few years later, I heard about a controversial group being formed in my former high school, where my brother was then a senior.  An openly gay male senior formed a group for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and heterosexuals alike - a group to discuss their diversity and to accept each other.  My brother was not a part of this group, yet he and all the seniors in that class endured picketing by the Westboro Baptist Church at their graduation ceremony.  The student who formed that group, however, got the upper hand - he heard about their plans to picket ahead of time and sent out emails asking people to pledge money to GLAAD or PFLAG (I don't remember which) for every hour that Phelps and his followers picketed.  The email went viral, and more money was raised than expected.  I've heard more stories about Phelps and his followers throughout the years, as they picketed more and more events, often dealing with homosexuals.


I don't really even know where to start on this.  I feel so hurt, so angered, and so infuriated by the message that Mr. Phelps and his congregation send out into the world.  They give a horrible name to Christians everywhere.  I am so thankful that I do not live in a country or time where this is thought by the majority of the population.  But then again, it seems like many people in America believe that gays and lesbians are inferior to heterosexuals (sure, some may say that they don't believe gays are inferior, but then they disagree with the idea of same-sex marriages.  Translation:  inferior, sinful, unnatural).  At one point in the film, Mr. Phelps says something about how at one time all the churches in America preached the same message that he preaches.  Sure, that may be true.  Back in the day, everything was hell-fire and brimstone.  But many things have changed for the better in this country.  We used to have slaves, and the majority of Americans now realize that this was wrong, that racism is wrong.  Women used to be considered inferior to men, and weren't aloud to vote, and the majority of Americans now realize that this was wrong, that sexism is wrong.  Things have changed.  Things will always be changing, whether you like it or not.  And I guess the main thing that got me with this film, because I was already used to their extreme hatred of homosexuals, was their hatred for America.  They think it's already down the toilet, that we're all going to hell.  Their hatred for homosexuals aside, they believe things that most Christians, most Americans don't believe in.  And they think, because we don't believe what they believe, we're all going to hell.


Going along with that whole statement he made about previous American churches preaching what he does, I found a wonderful quote from the second film, One Nation Under God.  This film was about Christian groups who exist simply to "cure" homosexuals.  They have used shock therapy, regular therapy, and a whole myriad of things to try to turn gays straight.  They base their view of homosexuality as curable on the out-dated thought that homosexuality was a mental disorder, and they use the Bible to convince these people that homosexuality is wrong.  Now I know that apparently in the Bible (see, I say "apparently" because I don't know this for a fact) it states that homosexuality is a sin.  But take the following quote into consideration.  Reverend Dr. Rembert Truluck,  of the Metropolitan Community Church, said on One Nation Under God:

One of the great problems that we face is that the Bible has been incorrectly translated by using the word 'homosexual' to translate a word in Greek that does not mean homosexual.  And so in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, there are millions of Bibles in print that use the word 'homosexual' to translate the Greek word for 'male bed'.  The word cannot possibly mean homosexual and was not translated as homosexual in any English version of the Bible until 1946.  In fact, in the New Testament there is no Greek word for homosexual.  There is no Hebrew word for homosexual.  There is no such word as the word 'sodomite' which is used in Deuteronomy and in Judges.  This mistranslation of the bible to be used against gays and lesbians is not found parallel in any other field.

Also, on one of the films (I don't remember which one), a historian stated that this word that has been translated to mean "homosexual" actually meant something closer to "pedophile."  After taking down the above quote, I did some research on the Bible verses he referred to.  I was amazed to find that there are so many different translations of the Bible, and that, with each one, the wording was slightly different.  Some said "homosexual," some didn't.  And I'm not even talking about interpretations.  I'm simply talking about translations.


All I know is that I feel sorry for the people who are filled with so much hatred.  It is such a worthless emotion.  Why live such a life of hatred when you can live a happy life full of love?


I'll finish with another quote from Reverend Truluck:

Instead of just defending ourselves and saying that the Bible does not condemn gays and lesbians, let's go ahead and say what the Bible does condemn.  The Bible does condemn self-righteous bigots who decide what is right for other people, and try to enforce their religious prejudices and their hates and their ignorance on other people in a kind of Bible abuse that has been a great damage to the lives of many people.