Sexuality in the Arts

A lovely woman in our intimate world kindly sent this correspondence to me today (after yesterday I had sent her a correspondence letting her know I was feeling down):

(The bolding and links were added by me.)

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RE:  you

hi.  i just wanted to share your influence on me.
 
(one of the ways in which you’ve influenced me, anyway.)
 
I was looking at the data on banned or challenged books on the American Library Association site, and i was really discouraged to see that homosexuality (or sexual content) was listed as a reason for the challenge in all but one of the top ten books.  I was going to send you an email with the subject line “depressing” and paste the list in there, like this:
 
The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2006” reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles:

“And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;

“Gossip Girls” series by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language; 

“Alice” series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;

“The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;

“Scary Stories” series by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity;

“Athletic Shorts” by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language;

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;

“Beloved” by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group; and

“The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.
 
But then I thought, “(She wrote my name here) doesn’t like to focus on what is depressing.  (My name again) likes to discover the positive about even the most depressing things.”  So I deleted the email without sending.
 
Then, out of curiosity, I went to Amazon to see what the book And Tango Makes Three is about, and I found that it is a children’s book based on a true story about two male penguins raising a chick.  I looked through the customer reviews and saw that only 6 of the 62 gave the book a one star rating for its promotion of homosexual ideas, but the remaining 54 gave it 4 or 5 stars (mostly 5) and raved about it.  I don’t know who the people were who reviewed it, or if they are an adequate sampling to make any sort of judgment, but in my opinion, it was very uplifting to think that the majority has a positive view.  It makes me feel a lot less depressed about the consistently challenged homosexual-themed books, as I remember that it does take only one individual to challenge a book.
 
Anyway, thanks for influencing me to try to see the positive in this world.  You certainly qualify as one of the most positive things around.
 
l,
(She wrote her name’s first letter in lower case here)

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Thank you love.  Thank you for highlighting one more positive in a world that so mind-numbingly and ignorantly bombards and surrounds us with unpositives.

If you’d like to read the reviews she referred to, they are linked here:

Amazon reviews for And Tango Makes Three

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