Gintarine SirdisAccording to Lithuanian reports, the Lithuanian Office of the Inspector of Journalist Ethics has ruled that a book of fairy stories Gintarinė širdis (“Amber heart”) by local author Neringa Dangvydė, which includes same-sex relationships and other LGBT-friendly themes contains “harmful, primitive and purposeful propaganda of homosexuality,” as well as “encouraging the concept of entry into a marriage and creation of a family other than stipulated in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania,” and being “harmful, invasive, direct and manipulative.” The Office therefore declared that the book should be marked under the local index N-14, as unsuitable for those below 14 years old. A Lithuanian parents’ group and conservative politicians were apparently behind the original campaign against the book. Further details, in the original Lithuanian, are here.

The original Lithuanian report, also carried by Lithuania’s  National LGBT Rights Organization, states that the book, which “contains magical stories for children about people with disabilities, same-sex couples, Roma, people with a different skin colour and other socially vulnerable groups is no longer available for purchase and the information about it was removed from a database of the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences (LEU), which published the book nearly half a year ago.” The Lithuanian commentary also indicates that the Office’s ruling regarding the Lithuanian Constitution may be false, as this does not define a family in exclusively traditional terms, and raises the possibility of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Also, at least some of the original work seems to be available online as a PDF here.

With Lithuania in serious need of Western support against resurgent Russian territorial and ethnic ambitions, this seems a really smart message for the nation of 3 million to send to the international community. Hopefully, more tolerant voices within Lithuania will prevails.

1 COMMENT

  1. Tolerance? Not really. All we need to is look at what the ‘Western’ definition of tolerance means. It’s a muddled mess at best.

    In the United States it means legalized abortion for any reason during the first six months of pregnancy and for any reason an abortionist finds acceptable after that. That’s our law, although European countries, with fewer racial minorities to fret about, tend to be more restrictive. Our courts have been nasty about state laws that lend even the slightest illusion that the ‘fetus’ is deserving of rights.

    Now add to that another factor. Homosexual activists have been quite insistent on a biological cause that is either genetic or hormonal. What is the consequence if such a cause if found? A biological cause means a prenatal test and all those anti-fetus court decisions will come back to haunt the so-called ‘tolerant.’ If aborting a ‘fetus’ with Downs syndrome is acceptable, as indeed it is, then aborting one that’s likely to be gay is also. No rights really does mean no rights. Part of mommy really does mean part of mommy.

    This has a personal twist for me. Read the ancient Greek philosophers and you’ll discover that many believed that logic could be used to distinguish between right and wrong. Find a logical flaw in the defense of one point of view, and it becomes suspect. For a long time I doubted that. Now I realize there is truth there. Inconsistency really does suggest that something championed as moral isn’t.

    In mid-nineteenth century America, critics of slavery often used that sort of argument. They pointed out that the laws of slave states were contradictory. Some laws treated slaves as if they were like livestock to be bought and sold. But other laws not only treated those same slaves as morally responsible creatures, something that was never done with farm animals, they even imposed more laws on slaves than on free people. Were they like cattle or were than particularly human in their moral capacities? Illogical and wrong.

    Western thought, a term about fashion that is perhaps more deserving of contempt than respect, is much like that. The same people who purr with joy over 80% of babies with Downs being aborted, will turn red with outrage if similar figures prove true for homosexuality. A mother who can do the former, perhaps with tax funds, they will scream, should not be allowed to do that latter even with her own money. Therein lies madness.

    The tale is too long to go into here. I’m actually writing a book about what it was like to grow up in the segregated South of the 1950s. My first social memory came in the first grade and was disgust at the stupidity of segregated schools. My first political memory came in the second grade when I discovered a sample ballot covered with the official logo of the Alabama Democratic party, a rooster crowing “White Supremacy for the Right.” That told me the reason for segregation–the Democratic party. By the sixth grade I was so disgusted with the madness about race that surrounded me, I seriously considered immigrating to some country far away.

    We haven’t really gotten over that madness about race. Contrast the recent furor over what some billionaire said in private with the indifference toward the high murder rates of young black males in cities such as Chicago and Detroit, and you’ll see that.

    We now also have a madness about sex that’s equally stupid. Lithuanian parents are to be condemned for not wanting their kids to read fairy tales favorable to homosexuality and yet, if science has its way, within but a few years many unborn babies with a homosexual twist are are likely not only to be aborted, but to be disproportionate aborted by one-or-two-children-an-no-more liberals who take great pride in the ‘tolerance.’

    Born into racial madness, I’m now forced to live surround by an equally vile and destructive sexual madness. Separate sex from responsible parenthood, the idea that’s at the core of this sexual madness, and you not only get gay babies being aborted, you get tens of millions of kids growing up in the emotional deprivation of single-parent households. Evil and its associated madness really does have evil results.

    Note too that the author of this article is hardly bubbling over with love. If those Lithuanian’s don’t agree with his POVs about sex, he threatens, then they can live under a brutally oppressive Putin regime. Keep in mind that not only means a regime that represses free speech, but one that’s openly hostile to homosexuals. Do you see what I mean about bad ethics leading to illogic and madness?

    To the cruelties of our racial madness we’ve added all the cruelties of a sexual madness. Children have replace those with a darker skin as the chief victims of that insanity. Not surprisingly, the party that was chief champion of the first now champions the latter.

    That inability to learn from past mistakes is another topic for discussion.

    –Michael W. Perry, Lily’s Ride: Rescuing her Father from the Ku Klux Klan

    In the book, there are comments on what it was like for me to grow up in the madness of segregated South, details about three members of my family who were murdered by the Klan or Klan-like groups, and specifics about that Democratic party logo. It wasn’t changed until early 1966, when “Democrats” replaced “White Supremacy for the Right.”

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