Speak loudly against censorship

(Reposted from my deviantArt blog)

Okay, this is going to be a rant entry, because I am pissed. Some cussing appears. You have been warned.

Laurie Halse Anderson's entry

For those of you who have not heard of the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (author of the equally powerful Wintergirls), it is a disturbing and heart-wrenching portrayal of one girl's choice not to speak out about her rape, and how she eventually manages to find her voice.

It's a beautiful book.

And contrary to what this Scroggins guy thinks, it is NOT SOFT-CORE PORN. (For crying out loud, he even thinks Slaughterhouse Five should be banned. I don't think he got the book's message.)

Speak should not be banned from school districts because this guy apparently finds rape to be equivalent to sexual arousal.

I like to think that I'm a fairly even-tempered, reasonable, average person. But few things make me angrier than censorship. When people like Scroggins call for the banning of books because they unveil real teen issues like rape, or when parents try to blame the failings of their children on the things their children are reading, you know what they're really saying? That they are lazy-ass parents. "If my child messes up, it must be because they read something bad, not because I'm a shitty parent." They would rather censor these forms of art altogether than take parental responsibility to talk to their children about the content and the message. They are TOO LAZY to communicate with their kids. So they choose instead to try to make certain books unavailable to ALL kids.

If seeing your child read Speak makes you uncomfortable, fine. That's your perogative. But don't enforce your own Puritan beliefs on the rest of your school district's children. Do not publicly compare rape to soft-core porn.

These are the same people who think gays should not have the right to marry because they don't want to explain it to their kids. "I don't like explaining things to my children. So stop your whole lifestyle, because I don't like talking to my kids about it." (Louis CK does a great skit on this topic.)

Scroggins, you're ignorant and you're a dick.

Ms. Laurie Halse Anderson, sing it.

And for everyone else against banning books that talk about the horrors of rape, SPEAK LOUDLY. This needs to be heard.