Just thought I’d make an interesting observation regarding the continued hypocrisy of same-sex “marriage” activists in our area regarding intellectual freedom and censorship. Not a big deal, but enlightening nonetheless.
First, a quick recap for context: A few weeks ago, when it was revealed that Fairfax County was systematically prohibiting/rejecting/censoring pro-family student book donations while stocking over 300 books opposing the pro-family perspective regarding marriage and sexual activity, we here at the Fairfax Family Forum hoped there would be universal denouncement of the prohibition and support for including diverse perspectives in Fairfax county libraries. We were unfortunately dissapointed as some called student protests over the libraries rejection of donated books due to “too Christian of a perspective” and “not balanced”a “political stunt.” They went on to call the students’ donations of “uneven quality” while simultaneously requesting copies to read, suggesting that they had never read any of them to make a true determination regarding quality. I guess the simple proposition that our default position should always be in support of intellectual freedom is not held by all in our Northern Virginia community. It seems that the animus towards to pro-family/Christian perspective the students sought to include was too great for some same-sex “marriage” advocates to overcome, despite the no-brainer situation.
As this situation was unfolding, we provided some updates here on our blog and, as always, welcomed comments and the exchange of ideas regardless of your perspective. These supporters of the libraries actions who were so quick to denounce the effort of the students to include diverse perspectives in their own school libraries left a comment. As I am currently the only administrator the Fairfax Family Forum has for this site and I was out of town on travel, it took a little over a week for me to approve the comment. Obviously, not having access to approve the comment also meant I lacked access to post, approve any other comment or update anything else on our site. I immediately approved the comment when I returned to Fairfax and added my own response thanking them for their comment and explaining the delay, but that didn’t stop the commenter from claiming I was “censoring” their comments as they weren’t approved in my absence. Clearly they intended to mock non-existent censorship on our blog as an attempt to paint those supporting intellectual freedom in Fairfax county libraries as hypocritical.
Want to know the real irony though? When I left a comment (my first ever) on their blog letting them know their comment was in fact approved, they never approved it! They did go on to post two additional posts and approve other comments, so clearly they did have the capability to approve my comment but chose not to. It’s obviously not a big deal, but I found it fairly telling that they would block comments from our site. They also appear to refuse to link to our blog for full context of any comments they cite, which just seems like an honest practice to me if you’re going to make any kind of argument. Seems like we’ve struck a nerve by exposing their opportunistic ways! Below is my full comment I attempted to leave on their blog (under this post), for anyone interested:
David/Jonathan–
Apparently you haven’t been back to our blog recently to see if your comment was present before leveling the charge of censorship. It was certainly not censored or modified in any way and has been approved as submitted… was just delayed a bit as I was out of the country last week virtually without internet access and am our organization’s only moderator. I find a bit of irony that you denounced a delay of barely over a week in approving a comment as censorship, however don’t seem to find anything wrong with a county systematically rejecting over 85 books donated by students as “not balanced” or “too Christian” over the course of a full year.
Also, please don’t try to circumvent the issue at hand here by going on about Focus on the Family’s unrelated past projects. This is a local issue here in Fairfax and, while Focus generously helped the students when asked, the donation activity is student initiated and student led. Let’s talk about the issue at hand. As to your comment “that the reviews you submitted were not legitimate reviews.” Have you read them? I’m very curious how you made this determination, as well as the claim that the books were of “uneven quality.” Please correct me if you have info to back up this assertion, but to me it appears to be grounded in nothing more than animus towards the pro-family/Christian perspective these students sought to include.
October 27, 2008 at 1:11 am |
Thank you very much for your response. However, there is and has been no comment from you in moderation on the Equality Loudoun blog. I only learned that you had released Jonathan’s (Oct. 4) comment from moderation because I just now looked at the stats and found a link from this post. I don’t moderate comments – the only reason one would be flagged is if it got caught by the spam filter – and there’s nothing there.
You’re welcome to submit your comment if you’d like. You can read our commenting policy at the bottom of each post. The only cause for deletion of a comment would be personal attacks or vulgarity. I’ve had to exercise that option maybe 3 times over the life of the blog.
As for your other assertions, I think I’ve already explained my position pretty clearly and see no excuse for your continued distortions. I did not in fact refer to the collection of 85 books your group donated to the library as being of “uneven quality,” as you keep saying, because I have no basis for making that determination – nor am I a librarian with the power to make it. What I did say is that there are many books out there that present the idea of same sex couple headed families – the topic of Tango – and that *they* are of uneven quality, hence not all of them are in the library. Tango *is* in the library, because it is a multiple award-winning book. Libraries have limited space and therefore standards for acquisition, one of which in this case is positive reviews by an independent professional journal. I suggest that you go back and read my post more carefully before you try to represent to others what I have and have not said.
I understand that you and your group have political motivations to make me the Censorship Boogeyman, but that characterization isn’t supported by the facts, to say the least. My position, which appears many times in the public record, is adamant opposition to censorship. I’ll say it one more time: I believe that the appropriate answer to speech with which one disagrees is more speech. If the FCPS or any other library were presented with a book that meets their published standards I would support its inclusion in the collection, whether I agree with the ideas it contains or not. I haven’t yet seen any evidence that this has happened, although the librarian has apparently offered to work with your group to find material that both meets their acquisition standards and addresses your concerns.
I’ll be posting this on my own blog as well, just so you know.
Best regards,
David Weintraub
Equality Loudoun
October 27, 2008 at 5:38 pm |
David–
I just tried to resubmit my comment for a third and fourth time. First time it again appears to accept the comment but not immediately post it, second time it says “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!,” thus the system clearly received my comment. If, as you say, you are not screening/blocking my comment, then I suggest you look into a technical problem with your site that strangely seems to target only me as other individuals have successfully commented since I first tried to do so.
October 27, 2008 at 7:49 pm |
I’ll take a look at it – thanks.