My Home State Never Ceases To Disappoint Me
I was born Norfolk, Virginia and raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I spent six years living in Charlotte, North Carolina, heading down there to go to college and, after failing horribly in that endeavor, staying down there because I didn’t know what else to do, but that’s the only bit of my twenty-eight years I’ve spent anywhere other than right here in my home. I like Virginia, it’s a gorgeous state. We have beautiful beaches, amazing mountains and when you travel through the state, not all of it, the more rural parts, you can’t help but think about how pretty it is. I like that we’re close to the nation’s capitol, though if you asked me why I’d have no idea, and that I can drive to Florida relatively easy from here, even if it’s a long drive. I love that we have as many Minor League baseball teams as any state not named Florida or California, though I wish they’d put one up in Hampton again. I like that it gets cold, but not unbearable in the winter, and that it get hot, but not, no, wait, it’s pretty stinking hot in the summer. I like Virginia. I’m proud to be from Virginia.
But, and that comma after that ‘but’ is huge, it routinely disappoints me on the simplest of things. I don’t think I’ve ever been more ashamed of my state than I was a few years ago when they passed a bill, by an unbelievably large margin, that stated that marriage is between a man and a woman, a man and a woman only. They don’t even have enough guts to pass a law against gay marriage, they had to pass one limiting what marriage was. It’s sad to me that something that is really a legal issue, because, let’s face it, that’s what marriage really is, becomes mixed in with a moral issue, which has nothing to do with the legal contract that the parties getting married enter into. It’s even more sad because in the relatively near future we’ll be looking back on times like these and wondering why everyone was so homophobic. Trust me, it won’t be long in our nation’s future and gay marriage will be legal in every state in the union. I know, to some it seems unfathomable, but so too did the concepts of free blacks, and the rights of blacks and women to vote.
If anyone actually read this blog I’d assume that moral diatribe drove several of them, likely Virginia residents, to a different part of the Information Superhighway, which is a shame because that’s not even what this post is about. No, it’s about a different bit of backwards moral judgment. When I was heading to check my email I saw this story on Yahoo.com. Apparently Culpeper County, which is in Northern Virginia, has banned the widespread use of the newest version of Anne Frank’s Diary because one mother was outraged at some of the new material in the edition. The material that caused the stir was absent from earlier editions concerned Anne talking about her emerging sexuality, supposedly in explicit detail, or as explicit as a 13 year old girl would know to write about. What’s sort of ironic is that the sections were originally left out because Anne’s father didn’t feel they were appropriate. He knew that his daughter’s words were an important recollection of the horrific tragedy his people were forced to endure, but he was unwilling to have segments where his daughter talked about herself as a sexual being become widespread reading material. While a part of me kind of disagrees morally with his choice, a bigger part completely understands and can’t find any fault whatsoever in his choice to edit her diary for publication.
But, regardless of her father’s wishes, the more complete version of her diary was published and frankly if there’s more to be read from one of the most important books in history, then all the better. But, kids in Culpeper County won’t get to read that new version because of one complaint. That’s right, that’s all it took for the school system to ban the book. One complaint. The mother complained and the schools system immediately banned the book’s use in the classrooms. They didn’t consult any other parents, didn’t talk to any teachers, didn’t interview any students, they just banned it because one person complained. That’s scary.
Culpeper County didn’t ban The Diary Of Anne Frank entirely, they just banned the new version from being used in the classroom. They will continue to teach the old version in the classroom and the new version will be kept in the library at each school. So this isn’t the completely gut-wrenching move of banning a book entirely, but it is still depriving the kids of the fullness of the book. The school board may as well have gone into each individual book with a big black pen and lined out the parts they didn’t like. The bits about the awfulness of the Nazis are just fine but the parts where Anne talks about how it feels to grow from a girl to a woman are unsavory. Like most instances in America, the violence is just fine, but don’t you dare mention sex. Did anyone stop to think that adolescent girls, and boys too, could learn more from the book, could engage themselves with it easier, if they were able to see Anne Frank as even more than a human being in great peril, but also as someone just like them, with a changing body and all kinds of foreign feelings? Sadly, I’m sure they didn’t. The mother saw sex and rather than have an adult talk with her child, completely ignoring the reality that at one point that child will be an adult and will need a healthy understanding of sex, and ran out to make sure that “filth” would never come near her baby again. And the school board, fearing the slightest bit of conflict, predictably took the cowardly way out and banned the use of the book, without even giving the slightest thought to what that action meant. The whole scenario is a conglomeration of short-sightedness and obstinance and it makes me sick.
And yes, I realize this story could have played out pretty much anywhere in this country, but when I saw the headline to the article I felt awful and when I saw that I happened just a few hours from here, in my state, the place I grew up, I felt an immense sadness for the state of things.
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