Library staff should consider other viewpoints
Last weekend’s library column (“LBGTQIA+ reads for teens”) is a prime example of public institutions only promoting one viewpoint, and ignoring the perspectives of many thoughtful and compassionate people in our community.
It also lends insight into why more and more people find the term “grooming” applicable to contemporary initiatives related to sex ed and gender identity. This approach purports to help young people navigate these important and difficult topics — and that is often the sincere motive of those who endorse it.
However, little room is given to consider the many downsides of casual sex, same sex attraction, or gender confusion, or the underlying factors that can contribute. The idea that these feelings and questions must frame one’s permanent identity and lifestyle is unchallenged. In the meantime, young people are led down a harmful path that makes them vulnerable to being used by others.
It would be helpful if the Manhattan Library (and The Mercury) gave equal time to different perspectives. Perhaps we could consider books, videos and other resources about those who regret the way their lives have been permanently scarred by following the path others have extolled as ideal.
How about stories from those who mourn the choices that have permanently damaged their bodies, warped their emotions, and made it more difficult for them to build long-lasting relationships and families? And what if we considered the many examples of people who have found freedom from lust, gender confusion, and unwanted same sex attraction?
Jonathan Hupp
2846 Oregon Lane
Shea’s column continues to be lopsided
The main problem with Bill Shea’s latest piece is that, again, it’s so lopsided it comes very close to falling over. Apparently, the Right is the realm of all that is pure and virtuous as opposed to the scheming, subversive, corrupt Left. It must be, because Mr. Shea says nothing in his columns about Proud Boys, Jan. 6, voter suppression, or the Koch Brothers and their holdings in Russia and machinations here as well as corruption in Republican administrations. No, Mr. Shea, our corruption “Devil” has two horns. While he references several sources, mainly for one presumed “miscreant.” I will present one for many.
Sarah Chayes has served on corruption commissions around the world: from Iceland to Nigeria to Afghanistan to name but three. In 309 well-documented pages she deals with the history of corruption, particularly two periods in America: the Gilded Age of the 1890s and today, in which she sees parallels. No one involved comes out un-smeared. Corruption is ubiquitous; no governmental form, no monetary economic system is free of it. In this country, both Democrats and Republicans are part of it, and the system perpetuates it. The book is “On Corruption in America and What Is at Stake.”
She takes two ancient Greek myths: the story of King Midas and the story of Herakles (Hercules) and the Hydra to frame her argument. The story of Midas is about the corruption and disaster that greed for gold brings. In the other, the Hydra was a critter of many heads with poisonous breath, but when you cut off one head, two grew in its place, so Hercules called his charioteer and that guy got some lances covered them with a kind of noxious pitch and cauterized every stump where Hercules lopped off the head and thus killed the beast. The first story is corruption by money; the second is the networks of privilege that surround and intertwine and poison. Most of the book illustrates these two points throughout world history and, especially, in the U.S.
Can anything be done? Yes. The problem is that it takes a critical mass of people: the civil rights movement is a prime example. Every person can do something, no matter how small, and collectively can do a lot. To do that we must, as Mr. Shea, sometimes says but doesn’t do, is put aside peripheral issues and focus, as we did in WWII. What if the “Tea Party” Right and the “Other 90%” Left and the “Sick and Tired of It All” middle could focus on a common issue like bottom to top institutional corruption? It might take something catastrophic as a catalyst. Maybe not, but we could throw the money changers out of the temple. At least until we began squabbling and yelling again and throwing rotten eggs and other projectiles at each other, including bullets… and the Hydra grew back its heads.
Frank Siegle
1013 Houston St.
