Banned Books (WAS:Re: Loaded words and other gay issues)

[annemehr <annemehr@yahoo.com>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Queer as John <john at q...> 
wrote:

<really huge snip>
 
> What I immediately think of by "slated" and "hammered" is the 
American
> Library Association's "Most Frequently Challenged Books" list ‹ you 
know,
> the one where the ALA tallies the books which are most frequently 
asked to
> be removed from libraries? Guess what's at the top of that one?
> 
> Yes, that's right. Harry Potter, beating out "Daddy's Roommate" and 
"Heather
> Has Two Mommies", numbers 2 and 11 of the 1990-2000 Most Frequently
> Challenged Books List.
> 
> http://www.ala.org/bbooks/challeng.html#mfcb
> 
> Nimbus Plug! Judith Krug, Director of the ALA's Office for 
Intellectual
> Freedom, will be speaking at Nimbus - 2003 in Florida this July.
> http://www.hp2003.org.
> 

Actually, I don't think we can be sure just what this statistic means 
on the face of it.  I believe there is a *very* good chance that 
libraries receive many more requests to ban Harry Potter simply 
because many more libraries *have* Harry Potter.  At least in my 
experience when a few years back, I checked my local library for 
"Heather" because I had heard about some of the uproar over it and was 
curious -- but the library did not have it at all.

If you really wanted to compare the relative amounts of objection to 
the three books that you mentioned, you would have to limit your 
statistics to libraries that had all three of the books, and see how 
many banning request each one got.

And of course, I have just seen an objection to my own preceeding 
paragraph.  There may well be many people who *would* ask to ban 
"Heather" and "Daddy's Roommate", but didn't because they hadn't heard 
of them.  I think a lot more people have heard of Harry Potter.

To sum up, Harry Potter *may* be first on the banned books requests 
not because it is more intensely hated, but merely because it is more 
ubiquitous than the others. 

Statistics can lie like a rug.

<another really huge snip>
 

> "gay" should be used only as an adjective. "Gay" as a noun - "gays 
gathered
> for a demonstration" - is not acceptable."
> 

This is *completely* new to me.  I'll take it to heart.  BTW, you seem 
to allow for the use of "lesbian" as a noun, am I correct?

Annemehr