Sometimes all you have to do to set me off is be a clueless asshat.

In West Bend, Wisconsin, some jackasses are attacking the local public library because there are books in the YA section that discuss homosexuality, but none of them represent the “anti-gay” or “faith-based, ex-gay” viewpoint.

Check out the video below. (It’s long and it kicks off at two minutes in. If you watch it for about five minutes, you’ll find yourself enraged. See if you can make it through all the way!)

Never before have you seen such vile, putrescent notions communicated in the avuncular tones of a kindly grandfather. The anchor looks like a Mr. Rogers clone. Only this one was modified to spew hateful broadsides, all while nodding gently.

There are so many things wrong about this video that it boggles the mind: The idea that homosexuality is aberrant. The idea that teens are “kids” who need to be looked after and coddled by clueless adults, lest the very notion of homosexuality somehow poison them. The idea that a faith-based, “ex-gay” narrative is worth the paper it’s printed on. The idea that only “wholesome” material should be available to teens.

My favorite bit is when anchor Vic Eliason scans a list of basic descriptions of books like Hero and Naomi and Ely’s No-Kiss List and comments that the mere book descriptions would “make you blush.” Then he proceeds to read them, and let me tell you — there is nothing blush-worthy in the descriptions. After reading through many of them, he stops, worried about “polluting” the minds of his viewers.

Puh-lease.

What we have here is, once again, a collection of “well-meaning” parents and self-appointed arbiters of morality displaying their woeful ignorance and general inability to see the world that exists outside their own narrow scope. So afraid are they that a kid might learn that there are — gasp! horrors! — gay people in the world who are actually well-adjusted, happy, and content that they feel the need to impose bullshit “faith-based, ex-gay” narratives on the community.

I wonder if these same people also feel that for every book in which, say, a firearm is treated with respect that there should be a book explaining the dangers of guns. That for every book glorifying war there should be a book explaining its horrors. That for every single book that dares to explicate on the wonders of heterosexual marriage there must be a book that decries the institution.

I bet not. Vic constantly chirps “fair and balanced!” Yeah, right.

These people give Christians a bad name. They give faith a bad name.

Vic Eliason and channel 30 should be ashamed of themselves. It is incumbent upon a free press to educate the public, not to demagogue issues and, furthermore, stir up fear and unease. It’s not the job of Vic Eliason to lead us bravely back to the 1950s, when — as he rhapsodizes — sex was kept “in the closet [pun intended? who knows?]” and “in the bedroom.” He also — quite hilariously — warns his readers that if homosexuality became the “normal lifestyle” that the planet would be “pretty empty” in a generation.

I’m not making this stuff up.

Wake up and smell the reality, Vic. This is the real world.

Eliason dredges up tawdry old bull about “the gay lifestyle” leading to early death. He all but calls for attacks on the librarians who make the selection decision for the library, noting that once a book is on the shelves, it almost never leaves. So maybe, he wonders, we should be asking who decides what books go on the shelves in the first place.

Sounds like a not-so-veiled threat to me. Sounds like same-old, same-old.

Man. Now I need to go take some blood pressure meds because I am BOILING.

In Focus 3/4/09: Vic Eliason from In Focus TV on Vimeo.

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