A book about two male penguins raising a chick is causing far more controversy than it’s worth in Loudoun County:
A children’s book about two male penguins that hatch and parent a chick was pulled from library shelves in Loudoun County elementary schools this month after a parent complained that it promoted a gay agenda.
The decision by Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III led many parents and gay rights advocates to rush to the penguins’ defense. Many say that the school system should not have allowed one complaint to limit children’s literary choices. Some are calling for an overhaul of the book review policy. Besides, many say, what could be wrong with a book about penguins?
The book is based “on a true story . . . of what happens in the animal kingdom,” said David Weintraub, director of Equality Loudoun, a gay rights organization. “It’s about the joy of being part of a family. These penguins love each other. They take care of each other.”
The book, “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, draws on the real-life story of Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York. It also appears to make a point about tolerance of alternative families.
If you want to teach your child intolerance like this, it’s your right, but you don’t have the right to force that brand of intolerance on the rest of the community. This isn’t required reading, it’s a book in a library. If you don’t want your kid reading it, then don’t let them read it and keep your mouth shut.
February 17th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Exactly. What I would say to these parents is that they need to suck it up and do what the rest of us do: Talk to our kids about what we believe and what our values are. I have no problem at all with a parent saying to their child “Sometimes two men raise children together like Roy and Silo, and it’s unnatural and they’re going to hell.” That’s their right.
It’s not their right to tell a child who has two moms or two dads that she can’t talk about her family or share this book. They have it backwards. They seem to think that if this book is in the library, their rights have been violated. The truth is that only if someone complained about the books that express their viewpoint and had them removed would their rights be violated. I suspect that there are many such books, and they are free to read them with their children.
There’s a Facebook group for people who find this all inexpressibly stupid and would like to connect with each other to get the decision reversed.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Or maybe you don’t have the right to force your brand of permissiveness/license on the community by compelling it to fund the purchase of books like this, Doug.
I know it’s easy to overlook the question of public funding of this type, but I don’t expect you to do it, Doug.
February 18th, 2008 at 9:15 am
No, Jimmy Boy should decide what books our public schools and libraries should stock. Silly me. I thought the public included everyone.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
ITA with my friend Jim Young. The taxpayers of Loudoun County shouldn’t have to pay for books they find morally objectionable. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
February 18th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Great. I’m sure I can find many books I find morally objectionable. Let’s all do it. That will save the taxpayers a ton, since there won’t be any books left.
Brilliant.
February 18th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Thanks, Leslie. Shame on me for not using that quotation. I guess familiarity breeds … well, if not contempt, then forgetfulness.
As for you, Davey Boy, I suppose I could point out that most people don’t want perverts choosing their children’s reading materials, but that would be sinking to your name-calling (”Jimmy Boy?!?!”) level. I know it’s inconvenient to the incredibly earnest and sanctimonious far Left for someone to point out the other side of the debate, but there it is.
As long as you have government-funded libraries, someone has to make decisions about materials like this. It’s not censorship; it’s exercising judgment. The way that judgment is exercised in a republic is by voter choices and popular will. If you’ve got a problem with that exercise of popular will, then perhaps the answer is to defund such institutions.
February 18th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
James,
As long as we have government funded libraries, then a nice little ditty written back in 1791 would seem to apply.
It’s called the First Amendment.
Nobody is saying kids should be forced to read the book, but the idea that literature should be suppressed because someone finds it “offensive” is, well, totalitarian.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Doug, I suspect that I have a little more professional experience defending individuals’ First Amendment rights (more than 18 years’ worth, and dozens of reported decisions) than you have, for what that is worth.
With all due respect, you don’t even understand the topic. This isn’t about First Amendment rights to obtain such materials. That argument is a red herring. Nobody’s right to view or obtain the offending book is at issue. I am sure that it is readily accessible at Borders, or on Amazon.com. What IS at issue is whether the public subsidizes access to such materials.
Government funding does not obligate the government to purchase and make available all written materials. A library is well within its authority choose between Thoreau’s Walden vs. Mein Kampf and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” or scholarly studies of Leonardo’s and Michelangelo’s works vs. Robert Mapplethorpe’s picture of a bullwhip up his fundament. Somebody gets to make these decisions. Who, then?
By your logic, government is obligated to fund elective abortions, since, per Roe v. Wade, women have the “right” to obtain an abortion.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
By the by, on the issue of forced-subsidization of political propaganda, you might want to check out a “little ditty” styled as Davenport v. Washington Education Ass’n, from the Supreme’s last term.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:36 am
James,
You take the argument way further than it needs to be taken.
Here’s the real issue. The real issue is whether a vocal minority of parents should have the right to decide the content of curriculum or the inventory of a school library. The idea that each book in the library should be the subject of debate and that any parent who objects to a single title, whether it’s this book or Harry Potter, should be able to successfully get it banned is fundamentally absurd.
Frankly, I think they should have more freedom to send their children to the kind of school they want. But, in the public school environment, they don’t have the right to decide what everyone else can read.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:33 am
So, it boils down to “a vocal minority of parents” (it is always a “minority” which is vocal; furthermore, it is highly doubtful that you could sustain the notion that theirs represents a “minority” view) vs. a librarian with a far-Left political agenda who decides?
Color me on the side of the parents.
And “the idea” is NOT “that each book in the library should be the subject of debate and that any parent who objects to a single title, whether it’s this book or Harry Potter, should be able to successfully get it banned.”
First, as I rather handily demonstrated above, it is not getting a book “banned”; the book at issue is probably readily available at Amazon.com, Border, and/or the Lambda Book Store. The notion that this is about “banning” is false, inflammatory, and demagogic rhetoric.
Second, if a patently or even arguably offensive book comes to the attention of parents, aren’t you suggesting that they should just shut up? What about THEIR First Amendment rights to protest and petition government? What about their inherent rights to supervise the education of their children? I suppose one COULD construct an argument about their surrender of their right when they enrolled their children in the government schools, but I fail to see how that is consistent with a libertarian view of government.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:37 am
James,
They have a right to speak up, but just because they are the loudest doesn’t mean that they are either right, or that they have to be pandered to.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:42 am
There is no constitutional right to have one’s children shielded from an idea a parent disagrees with. That demand is a perfect example of “special rights.”
Public funding requires institutions to serve the public. “The public” means everybody. This doesn’t seem to me to be a difficult concept, although Jimmy appears to be struggling with it. The public elects the School Board, which appoints the Superintendent, who hires professionals we call “librarians” to make decisions about the materials in our libraries. These decisions are not subject to a popular vote. That’s not the way it works.
There is a process in place, however, for challenging a book. In this case, our Superintendent pandered to a single parent by overruling not one, but two separate review committees comprised of principals, educators, library professionals and other parents. That was wrong, and demonstrates a flaw in the process.
No one is suggesting that parents with contrary views “just shut up.” They can suggest other books to be added to the collection that express their viewpoint. Obviously, they should talk to their children about what they believe and why they disagree with this particular book. This is known as parenting. The one thing they do not have the right to do is to determine for all the other families who use the schools what material can be in our public school libraries. They cannot have special rights, only the same rights as everyone else.
February 19th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Prance about the point all you want to, Davey Boy, but you have an outrageously expansive notion. You assert that “Public funding requires institutions to serve the public. ‘The public’ means everybody.” Actually, public institutions are NOT required to serve “the public,” as every individual would define it; they are designed to serve the public GOOD, which is, of course, where your argument fails miserably.
February 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
James,
And who defines the “public good” and why should one parent’s definition of that term be the one that controls ?
February 20th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Well, since you asked, Doug, as you well know, majorities tend to define the “public good” in the absence of any higher (constitutional) authority.
And once again, you seem to raise this straw man about “one parent’s definition of that term.” This isn’t about “one parent”; it’s about a recognition by one parent about the pro-homosexual nature of the material at issue, and the views of a majority of Virginians/Loudoun County residents on the issue.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Poor Jimmy. People in Loudoun overwhelmingly think Hatrick’s decision was wrong - he circumvented the decision of the many professionals and community members who approved the book, after all - and are deeply embarrassed by the way this one parent has made our county look. You don’t live here, Jimmy, so you wouldn’t be expected to know that.
People here hate censorship, and they recognize that the public good is served by reality-based education. This is a highly educated community.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:10 am
James,
Where is the evidence that this decision reflects the opinion of even a bare majority of Loudoun County residents ?
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Poor Davey. I wonder where he hears the voice of “people in Loudoun”? In a gay bar? I don’t have to “live here” to know that Davey is just projecting his own perverse views on the people of Loudoun County.
And Doug, where’s YOUR evidence that this decision does not “reflect[] the opinion of even a bare majority of Loudoun County residents?” What little evidence there is — the vote on the marriage amendment that you opposed; the choice of this official by the representatives of the people — tend to support my argument.
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
James,
The burden is on the censors.
So far, we’ve got a news report of one parent complaining about this book.
Where’s the so-called outrage ? I don’t see it.
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
James,
And, yes I opposed the marriage amendment. I stand by it, and consider its passage a blight on the history of a state that once stood for individual liberty.