Events in Wasilla, Alaska in late October, 1996 are looking more and more like some things that have gone on in Loudoun County, only the most recent of which was the unsuccessful attempt by anti-gay activists to have the children’s book And Tango Makes Three removed from our public elementary school libraries.
The Reverend Howard Bess, an evangelical Baptist minister in the nearby Alaska town of Palmer, reports that his book Pastor, I am Gay was one of the targets of a campaign by then-Mayor Sarah Palin’s church and other “conservatives.” According to a report by ABC news (video embedded below), “around the time that Palin became Mayor, [her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God] and other conservative Christians began focusing on certain books available in local bookstores and the town library.” It was during this time that Bess was told by the town librarian that “several copies of Pastor, I Am Gay had disappeared from the library shelves” that year.
The widely reported questioning of the Wasilla town librarian by the new Mayor is not in dispute.
According to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper, Emmons did not mince words when Palin asked her “how I would deal with her saying a book can’t be in the library” on Oct. 28, 1996, in a week when the mayor had asked department heads for letters of resignation.
“She asked me if I would object to censorship, and I replied ‘Yup’,” Emmons told a reporter. “And I told her it would not be just me. This was a constitutional question, and the American Civil Liberties Union would get involved, too.”
We know from our experiences in Loudoun that perceived attempts to tell people what they may and may not read don’t go over well, not even in unabashedly “conservative” communities. There was an immediate negative response by the Loudoun public to the attempted removal of Tango, and by the Wasilla public to Palin’s firing of the unbending town librarian (she was reinstated the next day).
Earlier censorship attempts in Loudoun – back when our demographics were considerably less diverse and progressive – were met with equally fierce resistance. You can read the entire sordid history of the Dick Black library board (that’s how he got his start in Loudoun politics) – the board’s removal of the American Library Association anti-censorship and Freedom to Read language from library policy, and the subsequent attempt to require content filtering on all public library computers – on the Mainstream Loudoun website. The requirement for content filters on public computers, for both children and adults, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court and reversed. The filtering software in question, rather than blocking pornographic sites as claimed, blocks access to many medical, informational and advocacy sites – such as this one. Its purpose, as with all censorship, is to deny access to ideas.
When you’re in the mood for some bizarre anti-gay behavior to marvel at, the Virginia fringe never disappoints.
Most states don’t recognize gay marriage — but now Hallmark does.
Incredibly, there’s more to report about the so-called “
These showerheads are not adjustable
That’s certainly an understatement. However, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Laws cannot force people to think, but they can restrain the thoughtless.
Such laws, unfortunately, are necessary. We reported here on the final, failed attempt to repeal Montgomery County’s new non-discrimination law (really just gender identity language added to a law that’s been in effect for twenty years). It’s over; the law is now in effect, nearly a year after it was unanimously adopted. This Washington Post article does a good, matter-of-fact job of explaining why the language was needed. Discrimination hurts people and it’s wrong, that’s why – but a lot of people still don’t understand what that discrimination entails.
We won’t know for some time the reasoning of the court, but those familiar with the case predict that it will be on the basis of flawed instructions from the Board of Elections. This in itself is important, because it clarifies the rules for future referendum campaigns. Had this petition been allowed to go forward it would have set an absurd catch-22 precedent for any party who would challenge the validity of a future petition.
That being said, it’s unfortunate that (assuming this turns out to be the case) this referendum wasn’t thrown out because of the improper and unethical way that signatures were collected. I spent a couple of days volunteering with Basic Rights Montgomery, checking signatures against the voter database and looking for other irregularities and violations (this is what the BoE was supposed to do, but they only checked voter registration status). Had it not been for this volunteer effort, the referendum proponents (from this point on referred to as “the showerheads” for reasons that will soon become clear) would have been allowed to get away with out-and-out fraud. The most egregious violations were things like sheets with some or all signatures in the same handwriting, and sheets that were witnessed by the same person who gathered the signatures. There were many other irregularities, but those are the ones that most clearly indicate a pattern of falsification. Given that the BoE was willing to certify petitions this flawed, one commenter noted sarcastically that future signature collectors could reasonably cut corners by copying random names out of the phone book.
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