Sigh. During my latest period of not having enough time to pay attention to my blog here, I totally missed one of the events I had planned to report and celebrate. As you can guess, and most of my friends already know, one of my most hard-line stances is taken relative to the issue of free speech and open access to information. Thus, the American Library Association’s yearly observance of Banned Books Week is something I’d planned to mention on here. Preferably, it would have been in advance, but hey, I guess arriving late is better than not arriving at all. Besides, it’s not like this is an issue which only happens once per year; the real problem exists continuously.

This year (2007), Banned Books Week was from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6. All the details, including lists of the most challenged/banned books this past year, are available at the above link. Once again, it’s overwhelmingly filled with challenges due to sexual content of some form or another, notably things which fuel the insane fears that mentioning the reality of homosexuality’s existence will cause children to become homosexuals. And God hates fags, according to some so-called Christians who spend as much time twisting and misinterpreting their precious Bibles as they do totally and wholly missing the point of Jesus’ message. Kids, if anyone ever says anything that begins with “God hates…”, feel free to disregard any and all religious opinions held by the speaker, because they have already demonstrated that they haven’t the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.

Back on topic, but still speaking for the benefit of my younger readers, I’d also like to mention a site called PeaceFire. With all the schools running all the misguided filtering software on their computer networks, that site is here to help. Take note, and make sure all of your friends know about it too.