Ah, politics, tourism, and gay buying power with a library at the centre of it all :)

LISNews.com Gay-pride controversy began over library poster

For more news stories, try: these Google hits.

Ironically (well, maybe not so surprisingly, since June was Gay Pride Month), there's been good news on the gay rights front from Spain). The Europeans must think a lot of Americans are Puritanical, frigid people who can't abide anything to do with sexuality--even something as very basic to a human's life as sexual orientation--but have no trouble exposing youth to extreme violence in a variety of media. I'm beginning to agree. One of these days I hope the days of discrimination against gays will be looked on with as much favour as we have for anti-Semitism or those who hated people who dared to interracially marry or march for civil rights.

People are people. We may not always agree with others' ideas, but that doesn't mean we should attack them for differences or fundamentally label them as cultural or social denigrates. Being gay isn't shameful and for that matter isn't really about sex, yet there are many who can never get past that and see gayness as an essential element in a person's makeup...perhaps because that narrow-mindedness precludes treating someone like a person at all. We are all unique individuals. Gays vary in beliefs, practises, faith, and in all the same ways that straight people do. They're not all liberal. They're not all interested in bar-hopping or other stereotypical behaviour. They don't all have keen fashion sense, for that matter. What they are people in our lives...our neighbour, son, mother, accountant, dentist, whatever, each with her or his own aspirations, struggles, loves, and wants from life. Isn't that what we all want, in the end, no matter if we're black, gay, Jewish, whatever--to go through a life full of love, happiness, and hope as best as we can, to make a difference in the lives of others and live life as fully as possible? Or am I naïve with that idea? I wish the county commissioners had thought about this before making what they thought was a mundane, everyday decision that turned out to have a surprising scope of reaction.