Posted on 06/09/2005 4:49:14 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
TAMPA - Two Hillsborough County commissioners say public libraries are no place for Gay and Lesbian Pride Month exhibits.
Commissioner Ronda Storms said she will schedule the issue for a board discussion where she intends to ask that such displays be banned. As the mother of a 6-year-old daughter, she said she does not want to be forced to explain homosexuality and transexuality if her child passes such a display and starts asking questions.
"I do not want to have to explain to my daughter what it means to question one's sexuality," Storms said during a budget workshop Wednesday.
Commission Chairman Jim Norman said that he, too, is concerned and said a policy discussion is warranted given that commissioners approve how money is spent on library operations. He noted that commissioners have previously taken a stand on such issues, voting roughly a decade ago to yank county funding from the annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Commissioner Kathy Castor was alone in expressing opposition to such a move Wednesday.
"I would hope this board would not use this dais to promote discrimination," Castor said. "I think it would be a terrible thing to put something like this on the agenda."
The exchange came a day after a story in the St. Petersburg Times noted that a book display honoring Gay and Lesbian Pride Month was taken down at West Gate Regional Library in Town 'N Country after some patrons complained. Library officials have since said it was a misunderstanding that led to the dismantling of the display, which they intend put back up in another part of the building.
A similar display is at the John F. Germany Library on Ashley Drive in downtown Tampa. It includes three shelves of books in the adult fiction section.
Library Services Director Joe Stines said the West Gate display was initially done by a part-time employee and a student who had designed a poster to highlight a bibliography of books with gay or lesbian themes. The poster was not professionally prepared, he said, which is why it was taken down.
"It certainly isn't in the children's area," Stines said after the meeting Wednesday.
Storms said she is not seeking to have any books about gay issues removed from the libraries. She said she just doesn't want them promoted in places where children are likely to see them, which could be anyplace in the library.
"This uses government to promote a political perspective," she said after Wednesday's meeting. "Whether we should have pride in homosexuality is a political perspective."
--Bill Varian can be reached at 813 226-3387 or varian@sptimes.com
ST. AUGUSTINE, FL (AP) -- For the next six days, 49 rainbow flags will flutter on the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine after a three-year battle by gay rights organizations.
A U-S district judge [Henry Lee Adams Jr.] has ruled against the city in a suit filed by the Reverend Ruth Jensen and Vicki Waldon of the St. Augustine Pride Committee, Equality Florida and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The city rejected a request last month to fly the flags for a week of gay-pride events.
Jensen was told by city officials that the bridge was reserved for groups of historical significance. In its most recent request to fly the flags, the pride committee told city commissioners that the flags would commemorate the 1566 murder of a homosexual man in the St. Augustine area.
City Commissioner Errol Jones says the city doesn't plan to appeal the judge's ruling.
TAMPA - As a graduate student in library science at USF, many of Meagan Albright's assignments involve creating special book displays. Several of her projects, on topics ranging from hurricanes to women's health, have been displayed at West Gate Regional Library, where Albright is a part-time librarian.
She's not used to her displays being yanked down after complaints and then resurrected in a much smaller version tucked away in the back of the library.
That's what happened after Albright's latest project, on prominent literature by gays, was installed near the Town 'N Country library's main entrance this month. June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, and Albright's display included several books with gay themes and characters, a suggested reading list and a large poster with photographs of famous gays. ........................
http://tampatribune.com/MGB89AUFQ9E.html
Unnngh. What a way to screw up a pretty town.
Gay Pride Month? What are they proud of and why spend a month on it?
The appropriate place for such a display would be a Port-A-Potty out back of the library. Are the Sodomites going to take over every public area in the US after the ACLU has taken down every religious symbol? If we let them, they will.
I'd better never see crap like that in my local library-and I live in the middle of nowhere. And I'm tired of hearing that mental abberation called "gay" instead of what it is, namely homosexuality-and it is NOT something to be proud of for even an hour, much less a month, in my opinion.
Oh yeah. That guy has lots of experience with six-year-olds. /sarcasm>
So why not a month of the Confederate flag flying. I think that may have just a wee bit of historical significance. Or a NASCAR flag, for that matter.
Homosexual Agenda Ping.
Nasty how public libraries, using OUR tax dollars, promote homosexuality willy nilly. Librarians are the ones who viciously protect our childrens' right and other library patrons' right to view pornography via internet. (Not all librarians, but many are liberals to the max.)
It is cheering when ordinary citizens stand up to stop the tidal wave. We need much, much more of this.
Let me know if you want on/off this pinglist.
A similar display is at the John F. Germany Library on Ashley Drive in downtown Tampa. It includes three shelves of books in the adult fiction section.: )
Just wait, next will be Gay Pride Year, then Gay Pride Decade, and then Gay Pride Century.
Of course at some moment God will put an end to it. Not by the flood as He promised diplaying the rainbow, but by fire.
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
(Genesis 9)
there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
(2nd Peter 3)
BTTT!
...beyond words.
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