A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality by Joseph and Linda Nicolosi.
Uh, what?
This turned my normally happy pixylike demeanor into a decidedly FROWNY FACE.
So, some people decided to write a whole (fairly thick!) book on preventing homosexuality. And then some other people decided it was such a good idea that it needed to be published and printed several thousand times on sheets of dead tree. And then some other people, the yokels at my store's home office, decided we needed to carry this book. In MY SECTION.
The book's all about whether children learn to be homosexual or if it's inborn, and by its jacket flap (I'm a bit too disgusted to read the whole thing), it seems they're leaning toward saying children become homosexual because of problems with gender identity or inappropriate relationships forced on them by parents.
So many studies have been done on whether homosexuals are that way because of environment or hormones. From what I've read it seems obviously tipped toward a physical predisposition, meaning basically if you're gay, it's not because of something someone did to you. And yet some weirdo on the inside cover of this book was saying how no one is born with one set of equipment or another without having the "right" tendency to use it, and that any other use of it is caused by errors in raising the child.
So basically, this is a book about how not to screw your child up enough to be a homo.
Okay. Let's look at this logically. People are going to experience feelings of attraction to whoever they're naturally predisposed to be attracted to. If, as this book says, heterosexual is the default and any changes are brought on by fuck-ups in child-rearing, then you would have to do some pretty serious fucking up to make your child go against internal programming.
And if you're that intent on fucking up your kid, it's unlikely you're gonna buy a parenting book.
So basically, this book is gonna teach the parents to look at the possible homosexuality of their child and begin to program the kid to reject their own feelings. Great! Let's make it so they don't even feel comfortable with themselves at home! Now that, my friend, is a great way to fuck up a child.
I haven't read the book. I may be misjudging what it has to say. But the comments on the inside have told me plenty. One thick slice of praise on the jacket insisted that the book wasn't based on homophobia, but instead was well within its rights to help rear children in certain value systems. Oh yes, it's much kinder to teach children to deny themselves so they won't get teased. That won't be an issue at all as they grow up feeling their own bodies and thoughts are evil.
Society does enough through certain institutions to try to make us feel like devils are lurking around every corner, trying to persuade us to make mistakes and stray from the True Way. Fuck, now there are books on warping your kids, all written with the insistence that the intent is to save and nurture the child.
Frowny. BIG frowny face.
Notes:
HARUMPH. dont you just -HATE- people sometimes? i know -I- do... quite often, and for reasons similar to this... GRRRRRRRRRRR. i say we kick em all. join me? stop by sometime! love [Divine Malevolence]
Now that's INCREDIBLY STUPID!!!!!!! (Tiny Toons reference.) Could possibly be a bumper sticker offensive thing, but the only on I could think of as being blatant is the "Stupid" one. :) [Meggie]
Smiles. I smile. You know, when I'm REALLY angry, I smile. That means I'm willing to kick their ass and enjoy it. People actually publish shit like this? [katqueen]