Comments on: Lest we forget

By: LesbianDad

LesbianDad — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:57:46 +0000

Thanks for the cheery vantage point, GreenWeaver. I very much appreciate the breath of fresh air. And thank you for the reminder of the International Day of Peace!

By: GreenWeaver

GreenWeaver — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:26:35 +0000

To see this kind of anger over information, even as much as it shows how far this is to go, also demonstrates the power that education can have. People who fear what is in those books must fear it in part because that information can change minds, it can affect people. I take that as heartening because I know there are plenty working to get positive information out there.

I’m glad that you brought up the role of “It’s Perfectly Normal” in the banning of books and burying of LGBT experience. As someone young enough to have read it as an adolescent, shortly after it was first published, it sure had an impact on my own self-development.

On a different, but certainly related note, I’d like to wish folks a thoughtful International Day of Peace.

By: LesbianDad

LesbianDad — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:47:34 +0000

I couldn’t agree more, Mrs. Micah. Alas, the folks in Evesham, NJ and that vigilante in ME are surely crusading against something they deeply feel is abnormal and surprising. And they want their kids to know that too. So far to go.

And wow, FemKnit.

Don’t know if you visited these cities, too, or found memorials. But the passage I cite above continues:

Books by Jewish writers or with an anti-war theme (e.g. those by Erich Maria Remarque) from local public libraries and the Humboldt University were also burned.

There were many other small book-burnings organised around Germany on the same night; including at Munich’s Konigplatz. By the 22nd May book-burnings had happened in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, GÃ¶ttingen, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund, Halle, Nuremberg, WÃ¼rzburg, Hannover, MÃ¼nster, KÃ¶nigsberg, Koblenz, and Salzburg - and the Gestapo were confiscating public and private libraries to be destroyed in paper mills.

By way of Wikipedia, by way of Leonidas Hill’s essay, “The Nazi Attack on ‘Un-German’ Literature, 1933-1945,” in The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation.

By: FemiKnitMafia

FemiKnitMafia — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:57:17 +0000

I stumbled upon the momument to that incident when I visited Berlin about 10 years ago, and it was simply amazing. I was absolutely speechless; a rare phenomenon.

By: Mrs.Micah

Mrs.Micah — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:07:45 +0000

I think society would be fundamentally different if children were aware of happy non-hetero families from the start. Whether as playmates, or in school, or in show and tell.

Protecting them from something normal is going to make it seem abnormal or surprising to them later.