Protecting your kids = book-banning

Dan Casey of the Roanoke Times is the kind of creature I can't stand.

He writes a column, thankfully in virtual obscurity, for the Roanoke Times in Virginia.

I had never seen anything this twisted individual had ever written, nor ever heard of him, until last Sunday when someone sent me his most recent dispatch about a disgusting book carried in one of his local public school's libraries that contained the following:

sex acts between teenagers
male and female masturbation
suicide
oral sex
extensive use of profanity, especially the "F"-word
multiple cases of homosexual acts between teenage boys, including kissing, seduction and anal sex
illegal drug and alcohol use, including smoking marijuana and LSD usage
anonymous homosexual acts between men and boys
rape of a teenage girl while she cried
molestation of a young boy by a woman
molestation of a young girl by an older man
how hitting a girl can turn her on and make her love a boy
attempted sex between a boy and a dog

The book is called "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky. And it was actually recommended to students by English teacher Kathleen Renard, who passed along her copy complete with a bookmark that said: "Read banned books. They're your ticket to freedom."

As WND reported last week, Renard had made "a whole row" of banned books available to her students in celebration of the American Library Association's "Banned Book Week." She included her personal copy of "Perks of Being a Wallflower," complete with her own name on the inside jacket, among other selections.

"From Crayons to Condoms" lays out myriad reasons America's government schools have failed our children

So what did Roanoke Times Metro columnist Dan Casey have to say about this book and the scandal of it being distributed to public school children without their parents' knowledge?

He described the parents outraged by this story as "book-banners."

He blames the popularity of the book among teens not on MTV, the publisher, not on the schools for carrying it, not on the teachers for recommending it to students and not on a popular culture hell-bent on removing any shred of modesty and innocence left in childhood, but on … WorldNetDaily for exposing the scandal!

He explains how the book was the subject of a controversy in his own back yard last week.

"The story got picked up by WorldNetDaily, a California-based conspiracy-theory laden 'news' website," he writes.

First of all, WND didn't "pick up the story." It broke it – a full four days before Dan Casey's local fish wrapper ever once mentioned it.

Second of all, WND is not based in California and neither is it "conspiracy-theory laden." (He must be getting his "facts" from Wikipedia.)

Apparently, the WND piece hit its mark. According to Casey, if he can be trusted in relating any truth, "Calls flooded the office of William Byrd, Principal Richard Turner and the Roanoke County schools administrative offices."

He wrote that members of the Roanoke Area Tea Party movement circulated an e-mail with the subject line: "For those needing more encouragement to pull their children out of public schools." Good for them, I say.

Casey then goes on to explain that "Wallflower" is actually "a coming-of-age novel" that has sold 700,000 copies, as if that fact justified its dissemination in government schools and recommendation by government school teachers. For heaven's sake, Hustler magazine sells more than 700,000 copies every month. By that standard, it should be in every public school in America.

(By the way, this "conspiracy-theory laden 'news' website" is read by far more people every day.)

Casey evidently went right out and read parts of this piece of literature, because he assures his readers (I assume he has some) the book is nothing to worry about: Those salacious subjects mentioned above are actually described "with a bit of angst and detached horror." He also relishes in the fact that the principal has probably "dumped the complaint in the trash."

He points out the Roanoke County schools are taking the matter only slightly more seriously, removing the book from the library shelves pending a review.

"While we await that decision, here's a little ploy the book-banners might try," he concludes. "There's another volume in Roanoke County public school libraries that has lots of passages about sex, and homosexuality, adultery, sodomy and incest. Plus murder, fratricide and idolatry. Forgive me if I have ripped those juicy bits out of the book's larger context. You'll probably recognize the title. It's the Bible. If you want kids to read it, demand they ban it. That always works."

I tried sending a copy of this column to the Roanoke Times, but, oddly, they don't seem to accept letters to the editor online. How strange. Feel free to write directly to Dan Casey.