B.L.U.F.: Stop f*cking with the books, gezus.

The big news on the left right now (aka when I wrote this a couple of weeks ago) is the drama ensuing from “book bans” happening in Florida and other southern states. I want to talk about this, and other book stuff, because it’s important. Just to be clear, in this missive I am referring to book bans as “books removed from circulation and unavailable to anyone in a state/country”… books pulled from the shelves and being held, or simply held books, as books that have been flagged by someone and that are currently being vetted, but have not yet been removed… and removed books, which are books that have been vetted and deemed inappropriate in some way, and which will not be returned to the library.

I’m an author. I write a variety of things, but in the fiction world, I write occult and fantasy fiction. My books do not belong in schools. They are not child friendly, for the most part. While I’ve allowed my kids to read my books, because I know my kids and I know the books, that does not mean that all kids should read my books. That decision is best left to the adults in their lives, perhaps with input from the kids as they get older.

First and foremost, there are no book bans going on in this country that I’m aware of. There are a variety of books being removed from elementary, middle, and high schools because someone (and that “someone” is pretty vacuous, to be honest) has decided they aren’t appropriate. In many cases, I have no problems with it. Twilight doesn’t belong in elementary school libraries, nor middle school. I’d say it’s fine in high school, though. Harry Potter is much the same, though for different reasons. The first couple of Potter books are fine in the elementary setting, but the rest should be relegated to the high school library.

Read More

B.L.U.F. – Let’s just stop sexualizing children altogether, hm? It’s wrong at all levels.

The big news out there right now is Target’s ill-chosen marketing of “tuck friendly” bathing suits for children. I have to admit, I lost it when I read that one. I went and checked it out, because that was beyond the pale, even for the woke side of things. The bottom line is, it’s both true and “not quite true”. The bathing suits are there, but only the adult ones are labeled “tuck friendly”. But as that article states, the kids’ bathing suits are MADE that way. Due to all the bathing suits in question being Pride oriented, the tuck friendly ones were displayed next to the children’s ones. (Please note, this is about the inappropriate for kids bathing suits, and not the Pride items themselves.)

I’ll go out on a limb here. I don’t care if someone who has male parts decides that they want to be female. You want that, go for it. But you do it as an adult. I don’t mind catering to kids who want to dress like the opposite gender, or no gender at all. I’m fine with kids wanting to change their names, or institute a nickname. But changes to a developing body are not cool at all, as the fairly significant number of people who transitioned as children are now talking about. If you want to take hormones or make surgical changes after the age of 18, that’s between you and your doctors. It is literally none of my business. Do not go changing your children, though. That’s WRONG.

Read More

B.L.U.F.: Texas Senate Bill 1515 is unconstitutional and therefore should be removed.

Here on GFZ, we look at the constitutionality of laws and bills. AWA does a fantastic job of working his way through the infringer suits that are working their way up the chain. I am not nearly so skilled, but there are issues which I take a more traditionally Leftist stance on, which I believe should be looked at with the same deep scrutiny and view of constitutionality as we do the gun bills, laws, and court cases.

Currently, Texas has a Bill going to their House which requires schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, SB 1515. This is not an optional thing. Classrooms in elementary through secondary school will be required to post the Ten Commandments in each classroom, prominently. The version of the Commandments must be the one outlined in the Bill; no other version will be accepted.

This goes contrary to Stone v. Graham (see below), which ruled that Kentucky could not mandate the display of the Commandments in public school classrooms, because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Read More

BLUF: There are a lot of things that I agree with the Liberals on, but their path to get there seems wrong.

Starting at the top left corner, and working my way clockwise…

Should people working 40 hours a week be living in poverty? The simple answer (and the leftist answer) is no. If you’re working full time, you should be able to afford to live. That seems like a no-brainer, right? The problem is that there are different levels of “working 40 hours a week.” We currently have a huge number of decent paying jobs available in this country, which do offer a “living wage”, but people simply don’t want to do them. At this point and time, the vast majority of jobs out there do pay enough for people to support themselves and their family. Leftists prefer to bring up the “extreme poor” end of the deal (and to be honest, the Right sometimes seems to only see the “extreme wealth” side of things), and ignore the vast majority of people in the middle. I would love to see the country in a position to pay everyone a “living wage”, but the bottom line is, not every job can afford to do that. If you want to earn more money, don’t work at a job that can’t pay you what you need. Of course, the Left wants to point out huge numbers of inner city people who are living in filthy, tiny apartments. Do they exist? Yes, they do. But frankly, a lot of the people who are living that way do have the ability to improve themselves. They simply choose not to.

Read More

There’s a lot of stuff going on with Trump these days. Multiple law suits, a presidential run, and of course the carnival row of his arraignment. I’ve been asked what the Left thinks of all this, because it’s hard to get information from The Other Side due to media bias. Well… okay then.

Caveats: I’m definitely not Republican, but I’m definitely not Democrat either. All opinions expressed are my own unless I’m linking to someone else, which will be properly indicated. And I don’t like Donald Trump, but don’t think he’s the “devil” that some on the Left paint him to be.

Right now, I’m seeing attacks on the judge in Trump’s NY case, both because he donated $15 or $20 to Biden in 2020, because he presided and some people think that’s a good reason to send death threats. People are reporting that there’s no way Trump will get a fair trial in NYC. Christopher Buckley likens the entire thing to Trump putting the citizens in jail. There’s a lot of crowing about how Trump is claiming to be not guilty of all 34 charges brought against him. There’s a fairly high level of apparent joy that Trump’s “sleaziness” is being brought into the public light.

Read More