February 26, 2008 11:37 AM
Loudoun County Schools: the Tango tangle continues
See also Propaganda in Children's Literature
The other day, I asked "What's the real story behind gay censorship charges?"
David/Daneen - who with School board member and champion-of-all-things-anti-traditional John Stevens - is leading the crusade to get And Tango Makes Three back on the Loudoun County school library shelves has characterized me as "Barbara Curtis (an employee of the national anti-gay advocacy group "Focus on the Family")"
D/D, allow me to clarify. I am a freelance author and writer. I am no more an employee of Focus on the Family than I am of the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Times, or any of the other periodicals I write for or the companies who publish my books.
Also, to characterize Focus on the Family as "the national anti-gay advocacy group" shows the narrow-mindedness of your agenda. Focus on the Family has so much positive work going on encouraging and providing practical information for parents on raising healthy children and building strong families.
But you all can't see that because of your hatred and lack of tolerance for ex-gays and for anyone providing an alternative for those who do wish to leave the gay lifestyle. I know lots of gay people who aren't political and who can tolerate other people's beliefs and differences of opinions and be friends. But for activists, the whole world seems to boil down to "gayness" - are you for ME or against ME. There is no common ground, a lack of recognition that others are complex human beings or organizations with a lot of other stuff on their minds and their schedules that has nothing to do with how they feel about homosexuality.
It's sad to see this kind of myopia.
There is a double standard among gay activists which makes it difficult to have a real dialogue. I have yet to see a gay activist ever admit they were wrong about anything. (D/D, when I pointed out that you were roaming the Internet, trying to sic other activists on me - which I would never think of doing to you or anyone else, btw - you denied it.)
For authentic dialogue, people must be willing to treat each other with respect and to actually listen to what others are saying. For instance, I'm prepared to agree - now that new information has been brought to light - that if an existing procedure was not followed with regard to And Tango Makes Three, there is a legitimate basis for complaint.
For now, I will wait to hear more. Reasonable people do listen and are willing to moderate their views.
It would certainly be heartening to see a little of that in the GLBT community as well. It would be nice to see that them drop their defensiveness enough to tolerate the idea that some people actually might want to leave the lifestyle, that some might be professionally or experientially qualified to help them, and that those individuals and organizations have as much right to be "on the library shelves" so to speak as the aggressive GLBT proselytizers.
So there are lessons here for everyone, I'm sure. Life has a way of being generous that way.
Posted in Homosexuality, Loudoun County, Public schools | Permalink
