In the dead of the night, as I write feverishly, I am trying to figure out why I am so terribly upset with the NLB pulping of the three children’s books. I count three reasons so far. #freemylibrary (1) A cherished free-thinking space has been violated, and there are already so few such spaces in our society. We bring our two-year old to the library every other week, to run and read freely, trusting that the learned librarians would love learning and won’t take any partisan, factional, ideological, religious side. I head to the Central Library very often to conduct research, appreciating that the most hateful books and racist tracts are available to me for my probe into the inner recesses of humanity and inhumanity, for the difference between the two lies in the freedom to learn. And now the trust, and one more free-thinking space, gone, because of one knee-jerk fiat. (2) Pulping is an industrial insult to the humanity of knowledge. Book burning is at least transparently hateful of knowledge. Pulping is a callous and complete disregard for the life and wisdom that is contained in the book. It is like the Nazis plucking the gold from the teeth and cutting off the hair of Jewish inmates of concentration camps for reuse before disposing of the rest of the body as waste. It is like the industrial processing of animals for food, the spare parts recycled as feed. We don’t hate you, we just think you are useless as a book, and therefore we will make you useful again, as pulp. It is the ultimate rejection of life and knowledge. (3) In my opposition to the pulping as a father and an author/student/educator, the “pro-gay” label is slapped on me to pull me into a ridiculous political binary that I refuse. I have never been to a Pinkdot rally and I will never wear white. For me, gay partnerships is a fact I see around me, as real as single parenthood, cohabiting families and other types of families. For me, family values have always been about love within and beyond the family, however it may be defined by those who practice family life. Family life is private life, public policy on the family is another matter, but since when is community norms about denying facts? What community is that? Does it have a name? Where can I find that community to test the norms?
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 17:15:10 +0000
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