Gay books burned inside library in Chicago

[BR_Parkway]

http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_165144000.html

Police: No Evidence Of Hate Crime

(CBS) CHICAGO Some books were damaged or destroyed after a small fire broke out at an East Lakeview neighborhood Chicago Public Library branch.

The fire at the John Merlo Branch Library, at 644 W. Belmont Ave., broke out Tuesday morning around 11:50 a.m., Chicago Police said. Firefighters arrived quickly and used a hand pump to extinguish the fire, police said.

There was some damage done to some of the books and shelves in the area containing works of fiction, police said.

While there have been reports that some of the gay and lesbian book section was destroyed, police said there was no evidence of a hate crime against any particular group. The cause of the fire or whether it was accidental or deliberately set was unknown as of early Wednesday afternoon, police said.

Reminds me of something, anyone else?

http://tinyurl.com/lxt69

Magnus Hirschfeld (Kolberg, May 14, 1868 - Nice, May 14, 1935) was a prominent German physician, sexologist, and gay rights advocate.

<snip>

When the Nazis took power, one of their first actions, on May 6, 1933, was to destroy the Institut and burn the library. The press-library pictures & archival newsreel film of Nazi book-burnings seen today are usually pictures of Hirschfeld's library ablaze. Fortuitously, at that time Hirschfeld was away from Germany on a world speaking tour. He never returned to Germany, dying in exile in Nice on his 67th birthday in 1935.

Anyone who'd like to yell about how 'inappropriate' it is to make comparisons to the Nazis can, politely, go F**K themselves. They are living in a world of denial, and every single day we move a little closer to being that society that other countries will ask about in coming decades - "how could the everyday Americans allow that to happen to those people". Today's neocons are promoting the exact same hate, the same tactics and forming it around an "internal enemy" (gay people) just like the Nazis did with the Jews and gays during the '30s. 3/4 of a century later, and it's happening again.

[saltpoint]

1. A lot of men and women have died in bloody, desperate warfare for

our right to read and write books.

A library is a temple that sanctions self-discovery.

Whoever sets fire to books, no matter those books' content, is a terrorist.

[BR_Parkway]

2. I would certainly agree. But as quickly as this thread is dropping,

apparently not too many here share that feeling. What a shame.

[sui generis]

3. hey it sure walks and talks like a duck though doesn't it?

move along now, nothing to see here. Mere coincidence. :sarcasm:

[undergroundpanther]

10. It scares the crap out of me KICK!

Yeah it's a shame..So few on a proressive left board understand why it's so it's frightening!!!

[zbdent]

4. Don't forget, the Nazis killed all the intellectuals in Poland

who might actually have a thought about the occupation that was happening . . . the righties aren't yet to the point of outright killing . . . they favor "character assassination" . . . for now . . .

[donsu]

5. the bushmilhousegang has closed our science librarys

nt

[ncrainbowgrrl]

6. a shiver just ran down my spine.

I'm kicking this so that others can see it.

:kick:

[nickinSTL]

7. kicking...

:kick:

[undergroundpanther]

8. I have been sounding the alarm

And it is frightening to me to see this how deep,common and defended this denial is
I post on DU about the health police. People defend forced lifestyle changes on the scapegoat (fat people) without tolerating many rebuttals from those who struggle with this issue.

In case you never knew Nazis were very much into glorifying the perfect HEALTHY body and into forcing lifestyle control on people that were not fit as in not fit STOCK,and Nazis loved the idea of the the state"helping" people change into perfect healthy obedient servants to the"cause" of the super race perfect god man concept..

I see posts here about West Virginia starting a medicare"good patients" reward system,which is a insidious control game to filter the poor who don't obey authority and who won't fit the new ideal lifestyle and health model the state wants to make everyone become. This is EUGENICS. Think of Shiavo her death made it legal for the state to kill people. ONe woman's sister was MURDERED by the state and the thread I put up here trying to show the underlying evils as to why was IGNORED!
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/undergroundpanther/11
I see Bush's mental health tests for ALL americans,the forced drugging of kids,kids being arrested for tempertantrums,the glorified violence on the TV increasing, dehumanization of women in popular culture like a post here sadly describing how 'bitch'was written by kids on a sidewalk in chalk..I see news about no knock police searches and Round ups of illegal immigrants and detaining them for the fuck of it..I wonder if they might be tortured? Who knows? I do know we won't.

PEOPLE! GEt With it,Get out of Denial,it isn't tin foil anymore, WE NEED TO STOP QUIBBLING over how others think,live ,eat,dress,and look at the stuff going on right now,and GET HONEST and look at what is happening right before our eyes,right inside our own minds in our own WORDS and the toxins that have hurt the way we relate to one another!!!The Bullying,morally relativistic,half libertarian,dehumanizing,rape excusing,pro corporate, poor bashing,blame the victim,fat bashing,woman objectifying,mentality on the left(I have seen it here no use denying it) is also useful to a fascist regime.It's the left and right illusion in the people,that prevent SOLIDARITY, the fascists need conflicts over stupid controlling bullshit like the definition of marriage to distract,divide and control the country and have we and them fight for the state so it can weed out undesirables from afar.

What part of CREATE A PROBLEM,CAUSE A REACTION,CREATE A SOLUTION, MARKET IT SO TO MAKE PEOPLE WANT IT, THAN FORCE THE CHANGE THROUGH THE STATE ONTO PEOPLE.. fascist tactics don't you all get? America turning fascist big time.And WE yes progressive liberals,too many are acting just like good germans.

Yes the freeps ARE totally good germans.. but when I see so called progressives thinking it's fine to force through the state fascist things like a fat tax ,state determined portion control, forced vaccines, or other "lifestyle" discriminations,There are indeed bigots and say shit like all medicaid recipients are 'dirty' on a PROGRESSIVE site,that is more left than most are.. I get really ,really scared.

People now can be forced to pee in a cup for an employer's whim,Today there are 'checkpoints' where cops can pull you over and test you for booze, search you or your car,ask for your license name etc,what part of checking papers and checkpoints for the fuck of it is fascist don't you get folks? In the 60's this would have caused riots but yet today it is "normal" and some even think it's a GOOD THING.Maybe too many of us grew up in authoritarian homes so that when the state becomes authoritarian it looks"normal to us maybe even feels 'safe'.. Beware people.
_____________________________________________________________
There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms
should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads,
by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation,
is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays);
it is demonstrably inefficient -- and in an age of advanced technology,inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the **all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.** To make them love it** is the task assigned, in present day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and school teachers.... The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, **is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects**.totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Brave New World, 1946
Revised Forward
Robertson Davies (b.1913)
Tempest-Tost, 1951


And get this thread up on the greatest page PLEASE.NOMINATE,and kick.

[BR_Parkway]

9. Thank you for noticing

[undergroundpanther]

11. Vote this thread onto greatest

page please.

[BR_Parkway]

12. Hell, not even all who commented voted - I can't believe that people

just won't see the danger. I hate to say it, but maybe if I hadn't put gay in the title, it would be more pressing for people to look at.

First they came for the Jews...

[newyawker99]

13. kick

:kick:

[Pierre.Suave]

14. despite the replies to the original message.

I see no "proof" this was an organized act done specifically by BushCo operatives in any coordinated fashion to furhter hate on gays.

What i think this is, is some really dumb kids.

[BR_Parkway]

25. Um, the implication isn't that it was an organized BushCo plot - simply

that the level of hatred that this (mis)Administration has ratcheted up against gays is very reminiscient of how the Nazis used gays and Jews as the to be feared "them" that "we" needed the gov't to protect "us" from.

[Ezlivin]

15. Wait 'til they find out that King James (of the King James Bible) was gay

Oh the conundrum they'd face!

[WestSeattle2]

30. I've thought about that for years....

the very Bible which so many use to justify their hatred of others not like themselves, was commissioned by a homosexual. Go figure.

Of course most Bible literalists don't know the first thing about ancient Christian history, they only know what Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and their idiot pastor in the pulpit on Sunday's, decide to share with them.

Lazy Christians. They deserve to live in the cocoon of ignorance they surround themselves with. What is so irritating however, is that they not only live their ignorance, but try to impose their ignorance and stupidity on the rest of us.

[Change has come]

16. K&R

:kick:

[redacted]

17. I used to live in that part of Chicago. It could be anything . . . .

I used to live in that part of Chicago. You might even call it a 'predominantly' gay area. At least compared to other neighborhoods.

So while this might be a hate crime -- frankly any book burning in that library (or that neighborhood) could easily elicit rumours of a hate crime.

I also might add that this 'hood had a large number of 'hood-lums when I was there.

HOWEVER . . . .Let me last state that any and all dealings with the Chicago PD while I lived there left me to believe it was a very corrupt organization. (and probably not very gay-friendly to say the least).

Given all this -- none of the scenarios listed in the posts above would surprise me at all. Except, I doubt the Bushco's even know where this library is . . .so whatever it is -- it's a local thing.

[MethuenProgressive]

18. "No Evidence of Hate Crime"??

Yeah, right...
There's a hate crime at the front desk too, where they're keeping track of who takes out certain books. And don't you think for a minute that the books in the "G&L" section are exempt from Bush's data base.

[Brazenly Liberal]

22. Well, now, let's not assume it was a hate crime.

In the Brazenly Liberal blog, we decided to give it the benefit of the doubt:

...we do need to allow that it may have been the case that someone was doing research for a doctoral thesis on Stonewall and became so incensed at reading the long history of homophobia in America that spontaneous human combustion started the fire.

I grew up just a few blocks from that library. It's pretty much in the heart of Chicago's largest gay community. When we were still living in the area, it was not uncommon for assholes looking for trouble to come to the neighborhood looking for the opportunity to do some gay bashing. This incident just has entirely too much coincidence to it to be accepted as anything but a hate crime.

[Brazenly Liberal]

23. PS K&R and a comment

Now that the general public has learned to grok the difference between "ordinary" crime and terrorism, they should use that same understanding to see the difference between "ordinary" crimes and hate crimes. Hate crimes are terrorist in nature, though I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the White House to declare war on them.

[Ian David]

19. More proof that Republicans are just Nazis too lazy to march

See:
So, one of my neighbors called the cops to complain about my signs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1417691



See also:


Weapon Of Mass Destruction Found At Florida Sex Shop
POSTED: 12:03 pm EDT May 31, 2006
UPDATED: 2:56 pm EDT May 31, 2006

WALDO, Fla. -- According to investigators, the device hooked up to a window air conditioner of a store in the small Florida town of Waldo was a weapon of mass destruction. Deputies found the device at the store located not far from Gainesville.
http://www.wftv.com/news/9298333/detail.html


See also:


Man who confessed to adult bookstore arson thought it was "God's will"
May 5, 2006

KNOXVILLE (WATE/AP) -- A grand jury in Knoxville will decide whether to charge a Bible college student in the burning of an adult bookstore.

Twenty-year-old Benjamin Daniel Warren told authorities he put on a Ninja outfit and torched the bookstore, believing he was doing God's will.

More:
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=4865675


The photo below shows the burning of homosexual books in Berlin.


"Who and what is next?"

Roberta Sklar, spokeswoman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force responded to the President's support of a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage:

"If he endorses amendments such as this, which blatantly discriminates against a class of people, you would then have to wonder who and what is next."

Ms. Sklar's statement brings to mind another time in history. One of Hitler's first acts after taking office on January 30, 1933 was to ban homosexual organizations. From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

" Soon after taking office on January 30, 1933, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations. Brownshirted storm troopers raided the institutions and gathering places of homosexuals."

"On May 6,1933, Nazis ransacked the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin; four days later as part of large public burnings of books viewed as "un-German," thousands of books plundered from the Institute's library were thrown into a huge bonfire." more

More:
http://www.theocracywatch.org/homophob.htm

[Laughing Mirror]

20. The Burning Library

Is this the first homophobic fire in US history or is it just a coincidence?

BR_Parkway: Please keep us posted on any additional information or updates you see on this. Thanks.

[rinsd]

21. Another article (from Chicago Sun Times)

Fire started in library's gay books section

June 15, 2006

BY ANNIE SWEENEY Crime Reporter

Chicago Police are investigating a suspicious fire that burned about 100 books from the gay and lesbian selection at a North Side Chicago Public Library branch.

The small fire at the John Merlo branch, 644 W. Belmont, ignited about noon Tuesday and the cause remained under investigation, officials said.

Detectives were not investigating the fire as a hate crime, Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Monique Bond said. But gay rights activist Rick Garcia was concerned that it might be, given the subject matter. "It wasn't the history section," he said.

Bond said the fire was under investigation as an arson.

<sniP>

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-gaybook15.html

[Laughing Mirror]

27. Under investigation as arson

100 books out of 1,000 might not be considered a 100% success, from the point of view of the arsonist, but the message that is sent could not be any clearer. Who would want to do such a thing in Chicago? The same group responsible for the fire in Cominsky Park in 1979? They burned disco records, pronounced Death to Disco, a much celebrated event rife with homophobic undertones and overtones.

[rinsd]

29. Huh?

You're comparing an arson that is a likely hate crime with the ill-fated Disco Inferno promotion that conincided with 5 cent beer night?

[Laughing Mirror]

32. "Disco Sucks" was the slogan

Not only was it homophobic, it was racist. Disco was too black and too gay. It "sucked."



Disco Demolition Night occurred on July 12, 1979 at Comiskey Park during a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers. Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, two DJs for the radio station WLUP in Chicago, Illinois came up with a promotion that involved people bringing unwanted disco records to the game for a discount on admission. Most of the records ended up sailing through the stands during the game, nearly inciting a riot. After the first game, Dahl came out along with the records in a box rigged with a bomb. When the bomb was set off, thousands of fans ran onto the field. Some started their own fires and mini-riots. There was so much commotion and damage to the field that the teams could not play the last game of the doubleheader; the White Sox forfeited. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

http://www.jahsonic.com/DiscoSucks.html





Only by killing disco could rock affirm its threatened masculinity and restore the holy dyad of cold brew and undemanding sex partners. Disco bashing became a major preoccupation in 1977. At the moment when Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54 achieved zeitgeist status, rock rediscovered a rage it had been lacking since the '60s, but this time the enemy was a culture with "plastic" and "mindless" (read effeminate) musical tastes. Examined in light of the ensuing political backlash, it's clear that the slogan of this movement--"Disco Sucks!"--was the first cry of the angry white male.

The rock/disco wars might seem silly in retrospect if it weren't for the deadly seriousness with which they were waged at the time. In a 1979 end-of-year summation, Rolling Stone,the index of cultural regression, surveyed the field of battle like military strategists: "You can say that the first six months belonged to disco... and that the last six months belonged to the brave young rockers." The turning point was the July "Disco Demolition" rally in Chicago's Comiskey Park. The event's original gimmick involved blowing up disco records between games of a doubleheader, but the charged-up crowd lost control and began tearing up the stadium. Comiskey turned into a giant coded gay bashing, a frightening harbinger of an enraged, homophobic America, given sanction in the mock-patriotic venue of a baseball stadium.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9826,braunstein,229,1.html

"It felt like a book burning in Nazi Germany to me, to think that people would show up to a baseball stadium and break records. It was a movement they were trying to break."

--Nile Rodgers, from disco group, Chic, in BBC documentary,mini-video-clip here:

http://www.chictribute.com/video/sidor/chicago.html

Disco, hedonistic sex -- perhaps this dancing thing was really undermining American society. Threatening the masculinity of white males. Creating converts to the gay lifestyle, like Anita Bryant alleged.

To my mind this underlying homophobia in some elements of the "Disco Sucks" revolt were symbolized by Steve Dahl and his anti-disco campaign in Chicago. Dahl was a radio DJ who had been pushing the anti-disco sentiment for months on his daily morning show. He was selling "Disco Sucks" t-shirts and bumper stickers all over this capital of heartland America. On July 12th in Chicago's Comiskey Park, between a double-header, he went out onto the ballpark field and set fire to a huge pile of disco records with thousands of fans shouting "Disco Sucks." This demonstration turned into a riot and the second ballgame was cancelled. The next day an all-disco station in Chicago switched to rock, and others followed in Chicago -- and eventually all over the country.

Middle American had spoken, very eloquently. And there were undeniable homophobic overtones to their message. They finally understood the lyrics to "YMCA" and they didn't like what they heard. Dancing was for sissies. Real men play ball, so to speak.

http://www.livingart.com/raving/articles/housemusic101-18.htm

I was at Disco Demolition with my Friends Andrew and Brett and his older brother who was a big Sox Fan. We were all Listeners to 'The Loop' and Steve Dahl and card carrying members of the Insane Coho Lips. Steve Dahl's anti-disco 'army'. I was and AM a big baseball fan so ball games were always a draw to me. We went to this one, like all others, early enough to catch batting practice. So, I was surprised to hear it was sold out and that there were thousands of people mulling around outside the park. I was only 16 at the time so the feeing of the power we had as a group of people was a sort of rush to me! I remember the first game only for the mix of excitement and embarrassment I felt from the crowd in the stands. We were chanting to bring down the roof. But it wasn't chanting for the game. We kept on chanting Disco Sucks. It seemed like there was a constant barrage of records and posters flying through the air. I remember being perticularly embarrassed by that because people were flinging them intentionally at the Tiger players and I know how much those things hurt! We were in Centerfield which, at Comiskey park had a 30 foot brick wall down to the field. That is where we hung our 'Disco Sucks' Banner. I can't remember what it said but know it referenced our group of friends as the 'PPP' which meant the Pembroke Park Partiers. I also remember that Brett's brother was pretty pissed about the way people were acting. I also remember that we all were getting pretty high. It was more like an outdoor concert than a game. There were pipes and bongs being passed around and anyone could smell what was being smoked. By the break between games everyone was blitzed and exploded when Steve Dahl came out in an Army Jeep I think, with military fatigues and a helmet on. When he blew up the records everyone cheered but things did not get crazy until after he left the field....

many more testimonials from people who were there ....

http://whitesoxinteractive.com/History&Glory/DiscoDemolition.htm

If you see no homophobic connection between the library incident and the record-burning incident, what do you see? Homophilia?

[cosmicdot]

24. K&R

[Cerridwen]

26. K & R....n/t

[tinfoil tiaras]

28. Holy. Shit. Scary.

I used to think that making nazi comparisons were going way too far because Hitler and co (do see how nicely Bush's name can fit where Hitler's is) were evil and not just really bad. But shit like this scares me and makes me think that these nazi comparisons have merit. These fuckers are shredding the constitution and then burning the shreds in the fire.... :mad: :mad:

[NobleCynic]

31. It's an inappropriate comparison,

but not for the reason you're thinking. Neocon corporatism is disturbingly similar to fascism. The reason its inappropriate is that the Nazis, or in other words, the government, burned Hirschfeld's library. In Chicago it was most likely the act of a civilian. One dumb redneck burning a few books does not constitute fascism.

Nor is Chicago PD being too corrupt to care and or too incompetent to find the guy news, although the word fascist has been used many many times to describe the Chicago PD.

[deaniac21]

33. I firmly believe that those books were not gay. In another

newspaper they are described by witnesses as being inanimate.