Laurie Higgins, conservative anti-gay advocate from the Illinois Family Institute (a group, as noted by ThinkProgress' Zack Ford, that has a "storied history of making extremely anti-LGBT comments, earning it a designation as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center"), posted a peculiar screed yesterday berating, of all things, libraries and librarians. To give you just an inkling of what we're dealing with, I present the two opening paragraphs:
Self-righteous, dissembling librarians are seeking once again to foment “book-banning” hysteria through their annual dishonest Banned Books Week campaign (Sept. 21-27) sponsored by the self-righteous, dissembling, and politically partisan American Library Association (ALA).
The ALA pursues its hysteria-fomenting goal chiefly by ridiculing parents who, for example, don’t want their six-year-olds seeing books about children or anthropomorphized animals being raised by parents in homoerotic relationships. (Scorn and woe to those parents who hold the now-censored belief that homoeroticism—even homoeroticism presented in whitewashed, water-colored images—doesn’t belong in the picture books section of public libraries).
As near as I can tell, "homoeroticism" -- in her telling -- is the mere existence of gay people. Depicting even "whitewashed, water-color images" of animals being raised by two dads is a form of eroticism. I'm guessing those same sorts of images, but of animals being raised by a mom and dad, would be utterly wholesome, normal, and A-OK. And decidedly not eroticism.
At any rate, her point is that conservatives are victims because there is literature that acknowledges the existence of gay people (you know, "erotica"). And librarians are hypocrites because they don't stock hate literature but do stock literature that acknowledges that gay people exist. Now, buried among these decidedly pathological treasures, we find the true crown jewel of insanity: the point where she describes what librarians
should be purchasing. She begins with:
Next year, will the Schaumburg librarians display photos of empty shelves where books that challenge Leftist assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality should be (you know, pro-heterosexuality/pro-heteronormativity books)?
As per the norm for this piece, it is rife with what can only be willful misrepresentation. Like, for instance, that being pro-heterosexual means "challeng[ing] Leftist assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality" -- as if recognition that gay people and homosexuality exist and should not be persecuted (which, let's be frank, is what she means with the "Leftist assumptions" line) is somehow threatening to heterosexuality, or necessitating a "pro-heterosexuality" response. This is something we see a lot with the intolerant crowd:
My [insert cause/sexuality/other] works for me, therefore all other approaches should be disallowed/attacked/halted because they clearly can't work and must be evil.
You think your [cause/sexuality/other] works for you, therefore you must want to disallow/attack/halt everything and one different. And you must hate them too.
But that's nowhere near the most interesting part of this. She continues:
Will they ask for young adult (YA) novels about teens who feel sadness and resentment about being intentionally deprived of a mother or father and who seek to find their missing biological parents?
Will they ask for dark, angsty novels about teens who are damaged by the promiscuity of their “gay” “fathers” who hold sexual monogamy in disdain?
Will they ask for novels about young adults who are consumed by a sense of loss and bitterness that their politically correct and foolish parents allowed them during the entirety of their childhood to cross-dress, change their names, and take medication to prevent puberty, thus deforming their bodies?
Will they ask for novels about teens who suffer because of the harrowing fights and serial “marriages” of their lesbian mothers?
As with the earlier contention that the mere presence of two gay people existing is "homoeroticism", Ms. Higgins continues to apply wildly different standards toward gay people -- standards that she would never apply to straight people. Would she, for instance, advocate for YA books about teens who are damaged by the promiscuity of his heterosexual parents who "hold sexual monogamy in disdain"? Probably not. Probably (almost certainly), this is just a symptom of the conservative Christian libel that gay people are dangerous predators whose sexual urges can't be satiated. Would she ask for literature about teens who suffer because of the harrowing abuse dished out by an abusive heterosexual father, and the preachers whose advice to the victim is to be a better wife, and to keep praying? Again, probably not. Again, this is just another regurgitation of the right-wing lie that gay men and women are bitterly unhappy, violent, and driven by lust to be, more or less, sex machines on overdrive, with no "off" button. There is no monogamy. There is no happiness. There are no successful long term relationships or marriages (I'm sorry: "marriages"). Only misery, darkness, fear.
The solution for which, in case there's any doubt, she makes clear: death.
Will they ask for picture books that show the joy a little birdie experiences when after the West Nile virus deaths of her two daddies, she’s finally adopted by a daddy and mommy? (emphasis added)
(Aren't you feeling warm and sunny now?) When some external force kills a child's same sex parents, she imagines -- of all things -- joy. Unlike the child she describes above, whose missing biological parent was a source of sadness, "little birdie" is joyful when her two dads, one of whom might very well be a biological dad, are dead. Because, obviously, a child cannot be happy with two loving parents if they're the same gender. Much better that some merciful external comes along and kills them, so that she can be joyful with strangers.
A few things to notice...she refers to all the other scenarios in people-centric terms. She reserves animal terms for when she's advocating death for gay parents. And she doesn't quite come out and say, "hey, kids are going to be much better off if we kill their gay parents." Rather than loving-conservatives-murdering-gay-parents, in her scenario we have a benevolent external force -- West Nile virus -- at work, that mercifully removes two gay ... birds. It's curious that Higgins can't
quite bring herself to advocate directly what she is, in a roundabout way, advocating. I can only guess that she either recognizes just how reprehensible and inhumane her "joyous scenario" really is and can't bring herself to a full-blown embrace of her barbarity, or else doesn't want to scare people off the gay-hate train by being honest.
Either way, it's important to remember...we live in a country where anti-gay hatred isn't legally allowed to manifest in murder, so we don't see homophobia resulting (often) in deadly violence. But that doesn't mean the intent isn't there, or that violence isn't a potential end result of such pathological hatred. American homophobia is already manifesting in deadly ways in other parts of the world, like Uganda. And it is unreservedly on display in lines like these ones:
the joy a little birdie experiences when after the West Nile virus deaths of her two daddies, she’s finally adopted by a daddy and mommy?
Originally posted at Rachel's Hobbit Hole