Fahrenheit 404

Most people, when moving from overseas, worry about the maximum weight allotted for their household goods. We did too. Most people, however, fret about the weight of that 17th century bedstead they purchased while visiting France, or the solid oak dining set they found for a steal while in Munich. We, on the other hand, worried about our books. To say we, well I, own a lot of books is an understatement. I don't know if there's an equivalent of an Immelda Marcos for books, but if there is, I am her. In our living room alone, we have about 30 feet of books, our upstairs office contains another 15 feet, there are six boxes of books up in the attic, and that's not counting the bookshelves in my office at work. We have mystery novels, historical dramas, biographies, 18th, 19th, and 20th century literature, plays, military books, books on running, cycling, marathoning, electronics, US history, European history, how to survive in the woods, and the behavioral sciences. We own books in four languages, our youngest book is about a month old, and the oldest book we own was printed in the 1950s. We. Love. To. Read.

But every once in a while, when we have to start putting books behind the rows of books, and when purchasing a new book means wondering if we have room for it, it's time to clean out some of our beloved tomes. And that time was last week. After about an hour of scavenging all of our bookshelves for books we had not touched in years, books we had bought or received and never opened, and books that we really didn't need anymore (the ancient copy of "a divorce manual for parents" or something being one prime example) , I had about twenty pounds worth of books in a laundry basket. Very pleased with myself, I loaded the books in my car and took off for the nearest second hand bookstore.

And that was where the normalcy of this tale ended. now I'm used to different bookstores having different policies. Some will pay you, others give you store credit, some don't take really old books, others don't take books if they're not in mint condition, while some will even take books in foreign languages. But never, ever in my entire life have I had a bookstore refuse my books because of their content. And that is what happened this past week.

I showed up to the bookstore with a wide variety of books; mystery novels, spy thrillers, cook books, a few books on the Dalai Lama, and a book of lesbian fiction. And the bookstore took all of them, except, can you guess? Indeed, the books on the Dalai Lama and the lesbian fiction. When I asked why, the lady would only tell me that "they would not take those". Let the record show that this was not a Christian book store, nor was it Jewish, Chinese, a member of the Pat Robertson coalition against gay people, or anything that might prevent it from taking books on aforementioned topics. It was just a normal bookstore in a normal town in the south. And apparently, "normal" people in this very "normal" part of the world don't need to have the ability to buy books on those topics.

Now I realize that one argument might be that the bookstore needs to make money, and they may not sell those books in this town. However, how will they know unless they start carrying them? And may the record also show that I know several gay people, as well as people who would really like to learn about the Dalai Lama and Tibet, who, well, I don't know, might like to be able to buy a book on that in their own town.

I am guessing that the policy to not take books that aren't written by white, heterosexual, Christian men (and possibly women, but not too many) springs from the same line of thinking that makes it OK to fire 90 teachers at the end of the school year, some of whom earned several "teacher of the year" awards, because of budget cuts. It's the same frame of mind that forces schools to teach our kids that condoms really aren't safe, that gay people are going to straight to hell, and you will too if you don't tithe, that you can't drink on Sundays, and that anyone who threatens to take your assault rifle away is anti-American.

OK, so maybe I like to take things to the extreme. Just a little. But believe me, I want to be able to joke about this. I really do. And I have tried to come up with a funny angle since this happened on Tuesday. But I can't. Some things are just too important, and exposure to ideas different than your own happens to be just that for me.

Fahrenheit 451 may not be that far away after all. And didn't George Orwell write "Ignorance is strength"?