Lesbian Author addresses Arkansas Library/Lesbian Sex Situation
You may have seen the news stories, or perhaps you’ve heard the jokes. A man in Arkansas is suing his local library because his two teenage sons found Felice Newman’s The Whole Lesbian Sex Book on the shelves while they were researching “military academies.”
This parent says his sons were greatly disturbed by the material and “This matter has caused many sleepless nights in our house.” Who’s not sleeping? Is Dad sitting up and scheming ways to make money off the system? Or the boys, not because of what they read, but because of Dad’s reaction to it?
But this is a bigger issue. It’s not just about some dad trying to make a few bucks to send his kids to college. It’s a whole right wing agenda to cleanse our public libraries of materials they find offensive. And you know what that means: anything having to do with gay or lesbian sexuality, equal rights or basic sexual information.
See what Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book has to say about what’s happening in Arkansas.
Book image from Cleis Press
Comments
Oh you’ve got to be joking! When I was trying to come to grips with being lesbian a decade ago, I borrowed every book on LGBT stuff in my public library. All 6 of them. I was in the library a couple months ago, same 6 books are STILL there. I laughed sadly to myself. What about people who don’t have the internet? If I could have read books like Felice’s as a questioning lesbian, a lot of questions would have been answered back then…
if you ask me, it’s this guy’s own fault his kids saw this book. if you want to keep your kid away from certain “influences” then SUPERVISE THEM! don’t drop them off at the library and then monday morning quarterback your way through raising your kids. seriously- WTF?
In my library, which uses the Dewey Decimal Classification system, books on lesbian sex and military academies would not be shelved anywhere near each other because of their call numbers. These boys didn’t stumble upon a lesbian sex book–they were searching for naughty materials and lied to daddy about it when they were caught.
When these two boys, sleepless in Arkansas, stumbled so helplessly upon the book with THE WHOLE LESBIAN SEX BOOK printed so discretely in 200pt, bold, uppercase, red font on the front cover, did they concur, “hum, this could be just the military academy we’re looking for.”
As for the bigger issue, if dad looses, which he should, that will be one more feather plucked from the right wing.
I read the comments Felice Newman wrote and I have to agree; you never know what kids that age will find in the Library. She right…they could have found reading material that did give them a twisted idea of what sex should be…..like from the Bible! Let’s see them take that one out of the Libraries!
When I first decided to embrace being a lesbian, I went to my liabrary and read all I could find on how to come out, which helped me tremendously, I think it is wrong to remove items from a liabrary or any other place, its just freedom of expression, how would the right wingers feel if the liabrary or book store stopped having books available on hetro sex, boy would they be lost!!!! that man needs to grow up along with all the other right wing holier than thou people.
This reminds me of when I was 10, and I “stumbled” upon my father’s PLAYBOY magazine. Yes I was just 10, however, even at that young age, I could read! Kids aren’t stupid, parents sometimes are. The cover of PLAYBOY was enough for me to know, though I had NEVER heard of the magazine, that it was “naughty”…..these TEENAGERS were very aware of what they were reading. Unfortunatly, Dad has a bad case of DENIAL!!
It’s like suing Showtime for the L Word or QAF. I mean honestly people…seriously?
What’s next for these fundies?!? Trying to get certain “unacceptable” words banned from a dictionary?!? The way I see it- fundies are just trying to make money thru the legal system— just like Rev Fred Phelps has done.
Slimey people!!
I am a little worried for teenage boys who are “disturbed” by human sexuality. Their future spouses have a lot of work in store. I can just imagine the wedding night - the groom runs down the hall screaming and never sleeps again.