Bill O\’Reilly wants to have sexuality with you
Creators Syndicate is trying to bully a blog into removing a link to a Bill O’Reilly column, citing copyright violation. (Here’s the offending column.) This is obviously bunk, as it’s been decided in court that linking does not violate copyright. However, that doesn’t stop people from claiming that it does in order to get their way. This sort of behaviour by huge copyright-holder corporations not only makes a mockery of the whole notion of copyright, but it also threatens the entire structure of the web. If linking to something is violating its copyright, then any time anyone types <a href=”… they need someone’s permission to continue, or else risk facing a lawsuit.
On to the real reason for this post, however. I read O’Reilly’s column, about the Postcards From Buster debacle, and could hardly keep myself from laughing out loud. I thought, does anyone actually buy this sort of reasoning? Do O’Reilly’s arguments actually jive with anyone’s thought processes?
O’Reilly says that “introducing homosexuality into the little kid culture angers many Americans who believe sex in general is an inappropriate topic for small children”. I’m generally of the view that sex, as in the act and ramifications of sexual intercourse, isn’t usually an appropriate topic of discussion with small children. However, O’Reilly (and apparently the “many Americans” he refers to here) ignorantly conflates sexuality with sex. Sexuality is psychological, an ingrained preference for the company of certain other members of the species over others. It’s not the act of intercourse.
Why aren’t these “many Americans” up in arms about children’s toys or movies that show stereotypical princes and princesses getting married, having kids, and living happily ever after? That’s at least as sexual, and probably more, as showing a pair of lesbians in Vermont making maple syrup. Apparently, “many Americans” believe sex is an appropriate topic for small children as long as it’s good old-fashioned heterosexual sex.
O’Reilly asks:
I don’t want to be offensive here, but who in their right mind wants to explain Norma and Barbara’s lifestyle to their 4-year-old?
I do, Bill. How’s this? “Hey, 4-year-old child of mine. See Norma and Barbara? They love each other, just like your mother and I do.” That’s it. Explaining a homosexual relationship is as simple as that. But as long as people like Bill O’Reilly, and those who agree with him, consider homosexuality merely “selfish hedonism” (as O’Reilly’s comrade-in-arms Alan Keyes infamously said) and unworthy of being represented as a valid lifestyle, children everywhere will be taught that love only counts if it’s the “right” kind of love.
March 9th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
In reality, most four year olds would look at the two women and see… two women. Only adults might see two lesbians. You wouldn’t have to explain their lifestyle (whatever that means) simply because an unprompted four year old wouldn’t have any reason to think the women’s “lifestyle” is any different from that of his or her parents. In that sense, young children are more mature than adults.