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Title: Poet: Worm loves Worm Written by: J. J. Austrian illustrated by: Miike Curato Published by: Balzer & Bray, Jan 5th, 2016 Themes: celebration of love, marriage, wedding, worms Ages: 3-7 Opening: Worm loves Worm. “Let’s be married.” says Worm to Worm. Synopsis: A worm meets another worm and falls in love. One proposes; … Continue reading →

The proudly coifed and teased hair, the desire to make a splash, the lust after wealth, the racist remarks: Donald Trump? Or Mark Twain? Today is Mark Twain’s birthday; he was born on 30 November 1835, and died on 21 April 1910.

The post What would Mark Twain make of Donald Trump? appeared first on OUPblog.

The Supreme Court’s much-anticipated decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, is pretty much what most people expected: a 5-4 decision, with Justice Kennedy -- the swing voter between the Court’s four liberals and four conservatives -- writing a majority opinion that strikes down state prohibitions.

The post Incoherence of Court’s dissenters in same-sex marriage ruling appeared first on OUPblog.

During the decades of debates over marriage equality in the United States, opponents centered much of their advocacy on the purported need to maintain marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution in order to promote the well-being of children. It was therefore fascinating to see the well-being of children play a crucial role in the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans in Obergefell v. Hodges, albeit not in the way opponents of marriage equality hoped.

The post The US Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, and children appeared first on OUPblog.

In 1970, archconservative journalist John Steinbacher seethed at what he considered the worst casualty of the Sixties, a decade defined by two Democratic presidencies, expanded federal intervention in what felt like every dimension of daily life and defiant young activists sporting shaggy beards and miniskirts rejecting authority of all kinds. Unable to withstand these seismic shifts, he despaired, the American family was in grave peril.

The post The Democratic Party and the (not-so?) new family values appeared first on OUPblog.

Today, the people of Ireland will vote in a Referendum to decide whether to include the following new wording in their Constitution: 'Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.' This may happen despite the fact that Ireland has a Constitution grounded in Catholic values. Indeed, abortion in Ireland is still constitutionally prohibited. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1993, and the option to divorce has only been available since 1995.

The post The Irish referendum on same-sex marriage appeared first on OUPblog.

Sometimes, we say what we don’t really mean. ‘You look really tired’, for example, when we mean to be caring rather than disparaging of appearance. ‘I thought you were older than that!’ when we mean to applaud maturity rather than further disparage appearance. And so it is with the gay thing. The accidental difference between what people are saying or writing, and their intended meaning, is becoming perplexingly polarized.

The post Clarity about ‘the gay thing’ appeared first on OUPblog.

Usually I let the comic do the talking. Today, in the last week of LGBT Pride Month, I want to proclaim our unwavering support for the LGBT community. Everyone has the right to live, love and look the way they feel is right, without fear of retribution or judgment.

By Carlos A. Ball

Those who defend same-sex marriage bans in the United States continue to insist that households led by married mothers and fathers who are biologically related to their children constitute the optimal family structure for children. This notion of family optimality remains the cornerstone of the defense of the differential treatment of LGBT families and same-sex couples under the law.

There are three main objections to the family optimality claim. The first is a logical objection that emphasizes the lack of a rational relationship between means and ends. Even if we assume that the optimality claim is empirically correct, there is no connection between promoting so-called family optimality and denying lesbians and gay men, for example, the opportunity to marry or to adopt. It is illogical to think that heterosexual couples are more likely to marry, or to accept the responsibilities of parenthood, simply because the law disadvantages LGBT families and same-sex couples.

The second objection is one of policy that questions whether marital and family policies should be based on optimality considerations. The social science evidence shows, for example, a clear correlation between parents who have higher incomes and more education, and children who do better in school and have fewer behavioral problems. And yet it is clear that neither marriage nor adoption should be limited to high-income individuals or to those with college degrees. This is because such restrictions would exclude countless individuals who are clearly capable of providing safe and nurturing homes for children despite the fact that they lack the “optimal” amount of income or education.

Image Credit: Gay Pride Parade NYC 2013 – Happy Family. Photo by Bob Jagendorf. CC-BY-2.0 via bobjagendorf Flickr.

It is also important to keep in mind that judges and child welfare officials do not currently rely on optimality considerations when making custody, adoption, and foster care placement decisions. Instead, they apply the “best interests of the child” standard, which is the exact opposite of the optimality standard because it is based not on generalizations, but on individualized assessments of parental capabilities.

Finally, the optimality claim lacks empirical support. Optimality proponents rely primarily on studies showing that the children of married parents do better on some measures than children of single parents (even when controlling for family income) to argue that (1) marriage, (2) biology, and (3) gender matter when it comes to parenting.

The “married parents v. single parents” studies, however, do not establish that it is the marital status of the parents, as opposed to the number of parents, which account for the differences. Those studies also do not show that biology matters because the vast majority of the parents who participated in the studies — both the married parents and the single ones — were biologically related to their children.

As for the notion that parental gender matters for child outcomes, it is the case that most single-parent households in the United States are headed by women. This does not mean, however, that the absence of a male parent in most single-parent households, as opposed to the absence of a second parent, accounts for the better child outcomes found by some studies that compare children raised in married households to children raised in single-parent ones.

In short, the family optimality claim does not withstand logical, policy, or empirical scrutiny. Family optimality arguments, whether in the context of same-sex marriage bans or any other, should be rejected by courts and policymakers alike.

Carlos A. Ball is Distinguished Professor and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar at the Rutgers University School of Law. His most recent book on LGBT rights is Same-Sex Marriage and Children: A Tale of History, Social Science, and Law.

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The post Three objections to the concept of family optimality appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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When the news broke earlier that co-writers JH Williams II AND W. Haden Blackman (and not just Williams, as some sites reported) had quit Batwoman due to editorial interference, it was clearly going to be a big issue for the day. What’s been most worrying THOUGH is how quickly people have attempted to spin this into a story about homophobia — rather than a story which is more accurately about editorial edict.Both are obviously issues, but they have different ramifications. By focusing on an issue which is only tangentially related to the real issue, we’re doing Batwoman’s creative team and even DC Comics a major disservice. This isn’t an outright attack on homosexuality, but an attack on creator-control. It’s important that we focus on what’s actually going on here, rather than escalating a false claim about DC as a company.

In the joint letter posted to their websites this morning, the co-writers specifically noted that their reason for leaving the book was because of editorial differences. They included several examples of such differences, which meant several of their storylines had to be altered – their planned Killer Croc origin storyline which had been in the works for months, their current arc on the series…. and the wedding between Batwoman and her fiancee Maggie Sawyer.

This has been the part of the letter most people have brought attention to. Yet when asked immediately afterwards by Andy Khouri, Williams made it clear that DC were unhappy with the MARRIAGE part of the storyline, rather than the GAY part.

@andykhouri But must clarify- was never put to us as being anti-gay marriage.

— J.H. Williams III (@JHWilliamsIII) September 5, 2013

This has been reiterated by DC themselves – when I asked them for comment, they sent the following response:

As acknowledged by the creators involved, the editorial differences with the writers of BATWOMAN had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the character.

While DC has been guilty of many things, an anti-gay agenda hasn’t been one of them in recent years. Batwoman has been one of their most critically acclaimed books (making the creative change even tougher to take) winning several GLAAD awards along the way. While the gay character Bunker in Teen Titans hasn’t been without problematic portrayals, he was also an attempt to integrate the DCU.
On Twitter, the issue was discussed by Williams, journalist Andy Khouri and out writer Jim McCann:

While potential homophobia is a legit issue to question, it doesn’t seem to be the case, and it has diverted attention from what the real problem here would be – that DC appear to have an editorial system which is strangling creators, and forcing them to leave. Andy Diggle, Gail Simone, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Rob Liefeld and more have spoken at their unhappiness with DC’s editorial team over the last year, with the majority of them quitting books because of the problems. It’s got to the point where one prominent DC writer actually DMs his friends to say that his script hasn’t been edited.

Dark Horse’s Scott Allie also took to Twitter for a series of much-recommended posts about the subject, which you can find here. He points out that an anti-marriage policy isn’t a bad policy for a company to have – the problem is when editors don’t implement policy clearly. As has been stated by the creators but subsequently overlooked by many, the issue here is that DC’s editors allowed the story to move forward, when they knew ultimately it wouldn’t be allowed to go anywhere. As noted in conversation with Gail Simone:

@GailSimone@theJohnChihak Gail is right, but it still should not be a story to be avoided, but embraced fully.

— J.H. Williams III (@JHWilliamsIII) September 5, 2013

While it’s tempting to dump on DC for everything they do, it’s important to stick to the subject here, a problem which is real and tangible, rather than a problem being trumpeted by various well-meaning people. LGBT representation is an important issue – but it’s a tangential aspect of this storyline, rather than the main focus.

By Helen Berry I happened to be in New York at the end of June this year when the State legislature passed the Marriage Equality Act to legalise same-sex marriage. By coincidence, it was Gay Pride weekend, and a million people waved rainbow flags in the streets of Manhattan, celebrating this landmark ruling in the campaign for gay rights, and I was one of them. What struck me as a visitor from the UK – where civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been legal since 2004 – was the way in which gay marriage is still such a divisive issue in American politics.

Mattel partners with General Mills (to include exclusive Hot Wheels pullback racers in boxes of five of its popular kids' cereals — its first such deal in five years. Each box also includes a code for kids to access the Hot Wheels Racing Circuit... Read the rest of this post

By Elvin Lim

In 2004, the Republican’s hot button political issue du jour was same-sex marriage. 11 states approved ballot measures that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Last week, a federal judge struck down California’s Proposition 8 (passed in 2008) because it “fails to advance any rational basis for singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.”

However, Republicans politicians are not taking the bait to revisit this hot button political issue, despite Rush Limbaugh’s encouragement. One explanation is that Republican voters are already angry and motivated this year, and they are concerned about the economy and jobs. There is no need for Republicans to exploit a get-the-vote-out issue this year.

But, that is exactly what some Republicans have done, just not on the marriage issue. Instead, prominent Republicans like Senator Lindsay Graham and presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty are directing their attention this year on repealing the 14th Amendment, and in particular the provision guaranteeing birthright citizenship.

So is it or is it not “the economy, stupid,” for Election 2010? I think it’s about something even bigger than the economy. It’s about the power of the federal government, which increased dramatically with the passage of the 14th Amendment.

Consider that the first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”), which established the priority of national citizenship over state citizenship. While there were references to citizenship in the Constitution of 1789, the Framers did not define the content of citizenship in part because there was little need, at the time, to consider the idea of national citizenship as opposed to state citizenship. The nation as we know it today was not fully developed until the Civil War.

Read in totality, the first Section of the 14th Amendment isn’t so much a grant of birthright citizenship – the content of the first sentence – but a constraint on states’ rights, the point of the second: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” We know this to be historically accurate. Since the 1930s, the “equal protection” and “due process” clauses have been used against state actors to extend the scope and depth of federal governmental powers.

Fast forward to the 2010, and it is no coincidence that almost everything up for political debate today and in November has something to do with the power of federal government versus states’ rights, whether it be Arizona taking it upon itself to write its own immigration policy and the Obama administration insisting that immigration policy is a federal prerogative, or Missouri primary voters rejecting the federal (“Obamacare”) mandate that all individual citizens must buy health insurance, or Californians deciding in Proposition 8 that only marriages between a man and a woman are valid in their state. If the unifying thread in these agitations is the perception of a bloated, out-of-control federal government, it is also worth noting that the major resource for the aggrandizement of the government has been the 14th Amendment.

The Republican Party of 2010 is not the Republican Party of 1868, the year the 14th Amendment was ratified. The GOP, back then, believed in federal preemption of states’ rights. Democrats were the ones who were wary of federal power. The Rep

Neuroscientist Simon LeVay has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and is well-known for a 1991 study in which he reported on a difference in brain structure between gay and straight men. His forthcoming book Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation examines the evidence that suggests sexual orientation results primarily from an interaction between genes, sex hormones, and the cells of the developing body and brain. In this original post, LeVay explains how he initially reacts to new reported findings in this field.

I often lecture on the topic of sexual orientation. When I do, I sometimes mention research on finger lengths: according to several studies, the index fingers of lesbians are slightly shorter than those of straight women, when measured with respect to the other fingers. As I describe this research, I invariably see audience members examining their own fingers, as if doing so might reveal something unexpected about their sexuality. I hasten to make clear that the findings on finger lengths are based on statistical analysis of data from hundreds or thousands of subjects—they can’t be used to assess the sexual orientation of any particular individual.

Yet I myself use the “me test” as a gut reaction to any reported findings in the field. Not to figure out whether I’m really gay—I’ve been confident on that score since puberty—but as a quick, involuntary assessment of whether I believe that particular finding or not. As a teenager, for example, I read Freud’s theory of how close-binding mothers and distant or hostile fathers drive their sons toward homosexuality. This seemed to correspond to my own childhood experience: I was my mother’s favorite son, whereas I got on badly with my father. So I thought Freud must have been right. Now I believe that the direction of causation is the reverse of what Freud imagined: “pre-gay” boys tend to elicit adoration or protectiveness from their mothers, but rejection from their fathers.

Recent research has focused on gender-related traits in gay people. There have been over ninety such findings in the last couple of decades, covering personality, cognitive traits, behavior, anatomy (including the finger-length studies), physiology, and brain organization. Most have reported that gay men are shifted in the feminine direction in some traits, whereas lesbians and bisexual women are shifted in the masculine direction. As each study appears, I can’t help asking: is it true for me? Gay men (like straight women) have higher verbal fluency than straight men—check! Gay men have lower visuospatial abilities that straight men—check! Gay men have slightly shorter arms—check! I seem to be a pretty stereotypical gay man in many of these traits. Most researchers interpret these findings in terms of a biological predisposition to become gay or straight—a predisposition that results from an interaction between sex hormones and the developing brain and body. I certainly buy into that.

Other evidence has po

Cassie, Publicity

Peggy Pascoe is the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. Her book, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race is America has won two awards from the Organization of American Historians: the Lawrence Levine Prize for the best book on American cultural history and the Ellis Hawley Prize for the best book on political economy or American institutions. In this post, Professor Pascoe shares the history of Loving Day, taking place this Friday, June 12th.

Friday, June 12th is Loving Day, a holiday that deserves widespread attention.

Loving Day commemorates the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, the case that made interracial marriage legal. Both the case and the holiday take their name from Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple who grew up and fell in love in Virginia, a state that epitomized America’s tragic history of miscegenation law. Between 1890 and 1948, 30 states outlawed interracial marriage; many of them banned whites from marrying Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and American Indians as well as blacks. Enforced by police and prosecutors, by marriage license clerks, and in civil and criminal courts, miscegenation laws were designed to prevent interracial couples from marrying and to punish them if they did. Judges justified these laws by insisting that interracial marriage was somehow “unnatural,” a claim that became so pervasive that by 1958, 94 percent of Americans told pollsters they opposed interracial marriage.

In 1959, when Richard Loving, a “white” man, decided to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mildred Jeter, a “colored” woman, he knew they had no hope of getting a license in Virginia, so the pair traveled to Washington, D.C. to get married, then returned to Virginia, where they moved in with Mildred’s parents. The newlyweds had lived together for a little more than a month when they were awakened in the middle of the night by the sheriff and his deputies, who walked through the unlocked door of their house and right into the Lovings’ bedroom to arrest them.

When the Lovings went on trial, county judge Leon Bazile imposed a one-year sentence, which he suspended on the condition that Richard and Mildred agree to leave Virginia for the next 25 years. A few years later, the ACLU persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Lovings’ case, and on June 12, 1967, the Court unanimously declared Virginia’s miscegenation law—and those of all the rest of the states, too—unconstitutional. Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that bans on interracial marriage violated both the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the constitutional requirement of due process. Marriage, Warren declared, was one of “the basic civil rights.”

It is telling that although Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967, Loving Day didn’t become a holiday until 2004. In the meantime, Americans had a lot of work to do. Even the most recalcitrant of southern states had to repeal their miscegenation laws, a process that took until the year 2000. Public opinion had to undergo a dramatic reversal, until many more Americans approved of interracial marriage than disapproved of it. Then people had to begin to forget that interracial marriage had ever been illegal.

This is where Ken Tanabe enters the story. Although he was the son of an interracial couple who married shortly after the Loving decision, Tanabe had never heard of miscegenation laws until he stumbled across a reference to them when he was in his twenties. Shocked to discover the depth and breadth of America’s obsession with outlawing interracial marriage, Tanabe decided to make sure that no one would ever take the freedom to marry for granted again. In 2004, he founded LovingDay.org, a website designed to educate Americans about this painful history, to make Loving Day a holiday, and to promote its celebration. Among multiracial families, Loving Day was an instant hit. The 2007 celebration in New York City drew more than a thousand people. This year Loving Day celebrations will be held in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but also in Jonesboro, Georgia; Salem, Oregon, and Tokyo.

I hope they’ll all draw crowds. Until Loving v. Virginia, legal bans on interracial marriage had been a crucial aspect of American racism, race segregation, and white supremacy, so celebrating the moment when interracial marriage became legal is a fine idea. The images of Loving Day celebrations online at Loving Day.org offer hope that with enormous effort, even the worst, most entrenched discrimination can be overcome. And it seems especially fitting that Richard and Mildred Loving’s last name is such an appropriate symbolic fit for the budding holiday.

It ought to be noted, though, that this year’s Loving Day celebrations take place in the midst of another great struggle over marriage rights: the campaign for same-sex marriage. In the last several months, there have been remarkable victories in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa, and miserable defeats in California, with the passage and upholding of Proposition 8. As I write these words, 40 states and the federal government prohibit same-sex marriage. Perhaps our children and grandchildren will someday regard these bans as fundamentally wrong-headed, much as we now think of bans on interracial marriage. In the meantime, though, let’s put our hearts into celebrating Loving Day.

William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Darren R. Spedale are the authors of Gay Marriage: For Better or For Worse? What We’ve Learned from the Evidence. Eskridge is the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at the Yale Law School. Spedale spent two years on a Fulbright Fellowship in Denmark researching Scandinavian same-sex partnerships. He received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University, and continues his work on same-sex marriage through his pro bono activities.  Here, they comment on the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold Prop 8.

The California Supreme Court’s decision upholding Proposition 8 will be analyzed as a referendum on gay marriage. That would be a mistake. There are much higher stakes in the case. At bottom, it posed the question, What is a Constitution for? The Justices did not address that issue explicitly, but their action spoke volumes.

Prop 8’s ratification by the voters in the 2008 election overrode the Court’s earlier decision invalidating the state’s marriage exclusion of lesbian and gay couples. Lesbian and gay couples challenged Prop 8 as an “unconstitutional constitutional amendment.” Their argument, rejected by the Court, was that Prop 8’s fundamental change in minority rights should have gone through the more deliberative process for constitutional “revisions.” California Attorney General Jerry Brown made a similar argument, that a Constitution cannot be amended to retract “inalienable” rights.

At war in the Prop 8 case were two competing visions of what a Constitution is for. Representing the supporters of Prop 8, former Judge Kenneth Starr argued that a Constitution (or at least the California one) is an expression of the values held by the citizenry. To use Aristotle’s language, the Constitution is the “soul of the city.” Modernizing Aristotle, California provides its citizens with formal opportunities to express their constitutional commitments, through popular initiatives. Once the voters had spoken, the Court itself would have been engaging in unconstitutional usurpation if it had insisted on same-sex marriage.

Attorney General Brown and Shannon Minter (representing the challengers) argued that a Constitution demands more from the democratic process. Inspired by John Locke, their constitutional assumption is that the constitution is a social contract that guarantees basic rights to everyone. The Declaration of Independence called them “inalienable rights,” which means that even the Constitution cannot take them away without risking dissolution of the social contract. Because the Court itself had in 2008 held that marriage was a fundamental, inalienable right for lesbian and gay couples, Brown and Minter maintained that Proposition 8 was a constitutional betrayal.

A superficial reading of the Court’s opinion suggests that Starr prevailed. The Court upheld Prop 8, consistent with Starr’s democratic updating of Aristotle. But the Court rejected Starr’s argument that Prop 8 nullified the estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages performed between June 15 and November 8, 2008. The effect of the Court’s interpretation is to recognize those marriages, consistent with Brown and Minter’s stance in the litigation.

What is one to make of this Solomonic resolution? It may have been politically motivated, splitting the baby so that neither side would feel disrespected, on an issue that evenly divides the citizenry. It may been motivated purely by rule of law considerations. The Court would have had to stretch its precedents to strike down Prop 8, but the well-established canon against retroactive application of new amendments provided a legally hard-to-question rationale for narrowly interpreting Prop 8.

In our view, the Court was operating, at least in part, under a third understanding of what a Constitution is for. Constitutions establish processes for deliberation about important policies and values we should commit ourselves to. A Deliberative Constitution keeps the channels of political discussion open, insists that representative bodies be accountable to the people, and from time to time nudges the political process.

This is probably what the Court was up to. On the one hand, the Justices were persuaded that citizens were not settled in the gay marriage debate. Even as it allowed Prop 8, the Court reminded voters that a future initiative could overturn its rule. The Court was channeling both supporters and opponents of gay marriage back to the persuasive process; judges would not decide the issue for the people.

On the other hand, the Justices gave a nudge to that deliberation by validating the existing gay marriages. This provided an opportunity for gay marriage supporters to falsify stereotypes of gay people as anti-family. (The biggest anti-gay trope, and one exploited during the Prop 8 campaign, is that rights for gay people will corrupt children.) These lesbian and gay married families might also put to the test traditionalist arguments that gay marriage is bad for the community.

Gay marriage will still come to California, through a future initiative rather than a judicial decision. As we argued in our recent book, the new wave of marriage recognition has been coming in state legislatures (Vermont and Maine, with others to come).

Although schools and school libraries tend to deal with the most book challenges, public libraries can find themselves in a position where they are required to uphold collection policies. Below is a republished article from MyLibLog: My (mostly) Library-related Blog by Jamie LaRue. It is LaRue's response to a patron's challenge to Uncle Bobby's Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen and may be of value to librarians and others who defend freedom of expression. Also check the article on Mr. LaRue's weblog for the many comments from his readers which also contain some great insights. Also see the follow-up entry which is a response to further challenges. It will be interesting to see how this incident unfolds.

Jamie LaRue has been the director of the Douglas County (Colorado) Libraries since 1990. His website, with writings and resume, can be found at www.jlarue.com.

Uncle Bobby's Wedding
Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns.

I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians.

Uncle Bobby's wedding
June 27, 2008

Dear Ms. Patron:

Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about “Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy.

The intent of providing all that isn't just to occupy your time. It's to demonstrate that our lay Board of Trustees –- which has reviewed and adopted these policies on behalf of our library -- has spent time thinking about the context in which the library operates, and thoughtfully considered the occasional discomfort (with our culture or constituents) that might result. There's a lot to consider.

Here's what I understand to be your concern, based on your writings. First, you believe that “the book is specifically designed to normalize gay marriage and is targeted toward the 2-7 year old age group.” Your second key concern is that you “find it inappropriate that this type of literature is available to this age group.” You cite your discussion with your daughter, and commented, “This was not the type of conversation I thought I would be having with my seven year old in the nightly bedtime routine.”

Finally, you state your strong belief, first, “in America and the beliefs of our founding fathers,” and second, that “marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman as stated in the Webster's dictionary and also in the Bible.”

You directed me to the SarahBrannen.com site, which I also reviewed. I got a copy of “Uncle Bobby's Wedding” today, and read it. I even hauled out my favorite Webster's (the college edition, copyright 1960).

First, I think you're right that the purpose of the book is to show a central event, the wedding of two male characters, as no big thing. The emotional center of the story, of course, is Chloe's fear that she's losing a favorite uncle to another relationship. That fear, I think, is real enough to be an issue for a lot of young children. But yes, Sarah Brannen clearly was trying to portray gay marriage as normal, as not nearly so important as the changing relationship between a young person and her favorite uncle.

Your second issue is a little trickier. You say that the book is inappropriate, and I infer that your reason is the topic itself: gay marriage. I think a lot of adults imagine that what defines a children's book is the subject. But that's not the case. Children's books deal with anything and everything. There are children's books about death (even suicide), adult alcoholism, family violence, and more. Even the most common fairy tales have their grim side: the father and stepmother of Hansel and Gretel, facing hunger and poverty, take the children into the woods, and abandon them to die! Little Red Riding Hood (in the original version, anyhow) was eaten by the wolf along with granny. There's a fascinating book about this, by the bye, called “The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales,” by psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. His thesis is that both the purpose and power of children's literature is to help young people begin to make sense of the world. There is a lot out there that is confusing, or faintly threatening, and even dangerous in the world. Stories help children name their fears, understand them, work out strategies for dealing with life. In Hansel and Gretel, children learn that cleverness and mutual support might help you to escape bad situations. In Little Red Riding Hood, they learn not to talk to big bad strangers. Of course, not all children's books deal with “difficult issues,” maybe not even most of them. But it's not unusual.

So what defines a children's book is the treatment, not the topic. “Uncle Bobby's Wedding” is 27-28 pages long (if you count the dedication page). Generally, there are about 30 words per page, and each page is illustrated. The main character, and the key perspective, is that of a young girl. The book is published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, “a division of Penguin Young Readers Group.” The Cataloging in Publication information (on the back side of the title page) shows that the catalogers of the Library of Congress identified it as an “E” book – easy or beginning reader. Bottom line: It's hard for me to see it as anything but a children's book.

You suggested that the book could be “placed in an area designating the subject matter,” or “labeled for parental guidance” by stating that “some material may be inappropriate for young children.” I have two responses. First, we tried the “parenting collection” approach a couple of times in my history here. And here's what we found: nobody uses them. They constitute a barrier to discovery and use. The books there – and some very fine ones -- just got lost. In the second case, I believe that every book in the children's area, particularly in the area where usually the parent is reading the book aloud, involves parental guidance. The labeling issue is tricky, too: is the topic just homosexuality? Where babies come from? Authority figures that can't be trusted? Stepmothers who abandon their children to die?

Ultimately, such labels make up a governmental determination of the moral value of the story. It seems to me – as a father who has done a lot of reading to his kids over the years – that that kind of decision is up to the parents, not the library. Because here's the truth of the matter: not every parent has the same value system.

You feel that a book about gay marriage is inappropriate for young children. But another book in our collection, “Daddy's Roommate,” was requested by a mother whose husband left her, and their young son, for another man. She was looking for a way to begin talking about this with son. Another book, “Alfie's Home,” was purchased at the request of another mother looking for a way to talk about the suspected homosexuality of her young son from a Christian perspective. There are gay parents in Douglas County, right now, who also pay taxes, and also look for materials to support their views. We don't have very many books on this topic, but we do have a handful.

In short, most of the books we have are designed not to interfere with parents' notions of how to raise their children, but to support them. But not every parent is looking for the same thing.

Your third point, about the founders' vision of America, is something that has been a matter of keen interest to me most of my adult life. In fact, I even wrote a book about it, where I went back and read the founders' early writings about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What a fascinating time to be alive! What astonishing minds! Here's what I learned: our whole system of government was based on the idea that the purpose of the state was to preserve individual liberties, not to dictate them. The founders uniformly despised many practices in England that compromised matters of individual conscience by restricting freedom of speech. Freedom of speech – the right to talk, write, publish, discuss – was so important to the founders that it was the first amendment to the Constitution – and without it, the Constitution never would have been ratified.

How then, can we claim that the founders would support the restriction of access to a book that really is just about an idea, to be accepted or rejected as you choose? What harm has this book done to anyone? Your seven year old told you, “Boys are not supposed to marry.” In other words, you have taught her your values, and those values have taken hold. That's what parents are supposed to do, and clearly, exposure to this book, or several, doesn't just overthrow that parental influence. It does, of course, provide evidence that not everybody agrees with each other; but that's true, isn't it?

The second part of your third point was your belief that marriage was between a man and a woman. My Webster's actually gives several definitions of marriage: “1. the state of being married; relation between husband and wife...; 2. the act of marrying, wedding; 3. the rite or form used in marrying; 4. any close or intimate union.” Definitions 2-4, even as far back as 1960, could be stretched to include a wedding between two men. Word definitions change; legal rights change. In some parts of America, at least today, gay marriage is legal. If it's legal, then how could writing a book about it be inappropriate?

Finally, then, I conclude that “Uncle Bobby's Wedding” is a children's book, appropriately categorized and shelved in our children's picture book area. I fully appreciate that you, and some of your friends, strongly disagree with its viewpoint. But if the library is doing its job, there are lots of books in our collection that people won't agree with; there are certainly many that I object to. Library collections don't imply endorsement; they imply access to the many different ideas of our culture, which is precisely our purpose in public life.

As noted in our policies, you do have the right to appeal my decision to the Board of Trustees. If you'd like to do that, let me know, and I can schedule a meeting. Meanwhile, I'm more than happy to discuss this further with you. I do appreciate many things: your obvious value of reading, your frank and loving relationship with your child, your willingness to raise issues of importance to you in the public square, and more. Thank you, very much, for taking the time to raise your concerns with me. Although I suspect you may not agree with my decision, I hope it's clear that I've given it a great deal of thought, and believe it is in accordance with both our guiding principles, and those, incidentally, of the founders of our nation.

Best wishes to you and your family,

Do you keep vampire's hours? Are you a night owl or an early bird? Share your stories in the Comments area. By the way... The current world record for the longest period without sleep is 11 days, set by Randy Gardner in 1965. Four days into the research, he began hallucinating. This was followed by a delusion where he thought he was a famous footballer. Surprisingly, Randy was actually