Roughly translated, “burning books to save the children”.
Some citizens of West Bend, Wisconsin are looking to have themselves and old-fashioned book burning. No, there’s not some new Harry Potter book turning the kids into devil-worshipers. Instead, there’s books in the young-adult section that are explicit, and someone of them even are even “gay-affirming.” Oh, the horror!
The strife began in February when West Bend couple Jim and Ginny Maziarka objected to some of the content in the city library’s young-adult section. They later petitioned the library board to move any sexually explicit books — the definition of which would be debated — from the young-adult section to the adult section and to label them as sexually explicit.
Ginny Maziarka, 49, said the books in the section of the library aimed at children aged 12 to 18 included homosexual and heterosexual content she thought was inappropriate for youths.
She and her husband also asked the library to obtain books about homosexuality that affirmed heterosexuality, such as titles written by “ex-gays,” Maziarka said.
“All the books in the young-adult zone that deal with homosexuality are gay-affirming. That’s not balance,” she said.
Naturally, the library didn’t necessarily appreciate it when Jim and Ginny Maziarka (who will be referred to as Ned and Maude Flanders for the rest of this post) telling them how to do their jobs and refused to move the books.
The library did not agree with the Maziarkas’ suggestions, and the couple appealed to the library board. Ginny Maziarka, a mother of four, began blogging about the issue and the local newspaper picked up the dispute, sparking the opposition.
By the time the library board met on June 2, each side had collected more than 1,000 signatures backing their position. Dozens of residents spoke at the meeting before the board — still including the outgoing members — unanimously voted to keep all policies the same.
The demand to move the books was always going to be problematic because no authority has determined that any of the titles are pornographic or obscene, Tyree said.
OK, so Ned and Maude didn’t get their way. You’d think that would be the end of it, right? Wrong.
Outside West Bend, the fight caught the attention of Robert Braun, who, with three other Milwaukee-area men, filed a claim against West Bend calling for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned, along with financial damages.
The four plaintiffs — who describe themselves as “elderly” in their complaint — claim their “mental and emotional well-being was damaged by [the] book at the library.”
The claim, unconnected to the Maziarkas, says the book “Baby Be-bop” — a fictional piece about a homosexual teenager — is “explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian.”
Braun, who says he is president of a Milwaukee group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union, said he singled out the book because it “goes way over the line” with offensive language and descriptions of sex acts.
Now we’ve really gone down the rabbit hole. It’s one thing when Ned and Maude get upset and stir up some fuss with the library. But now we’ve got a group of people suing for $120,000. That’s $30,000 for each of these crazy old bats that saw the book in a library display. But I’m guessing for the CCLU, it’s not the money, it’s the principle. And that principle is burning books you don’t like.
That’s right. You just watched this man advocate that people go to the library and either rip the books in half right there, or check them out so that they may take them home and burn them.
Here’s what I find so incredibly frustrating people like Ned, Maude, and Crazy Old Mr. Braun. They want to to censor what they don’t like in the name of keeping everyone else safe. That somehow these self-appointed arbiters of everything that is just and moral know what’s best for all 30,000 people in West Best, WI. They go get everyone riled up, cause all sorts of trouble such as costing four library board members their positions for not bowing down to the Mob Of All That Is Moral. But then they have the balls to go and say something like this:
“We want parents to decide whether they want their children to have access to these books … and we want the library’s help in identifying [them through labeling and moving],” Maziarka said. “It’s just common sense.”
Whoa there, Maude. You can’t advocate moving books around that you don’t approve of, and then turn around and say you want parents to decide whether or not their children have access to the books. Especially when you’re the one who indirectly brought the book burners to West Bend. Here’s the deal, if parents in West Bend, or anywhere else don’t want their kids to read such books, that’s up to them. It’s not your job to decide what’s appropriate for everyone else in town.
And the greatest irony of them all, if someone tried to force Maude to take down her blog, or tried to cut off Crazy Old Mr. Braun’s microphone, you know they would be crying censorship until they were blue in face.
But when they’re doing the censoring, it’s OK. Especially if it’s for the children.
