Spoof from Onion

Check out this spoof article from The Onion (all the way back in January), if you need a chuckle. A nice turn on DOMA and right to marriage, in the context of supposed gay rights struggle for the right to a library card:

"No one's preventing gays from using libraries—they're fully welcome to walk into them, browse all they want, and sit down and flip through any book they choose, even in the reference section," said Sen. Jim Bunning (R–KY), one of several conservative legislators who has vowed to draft a constitutional amendment that would define library book-lending as a contract between a library and a heterosexual reader. "But to issue them the same library cards as a regular American citizen would demean what our nation's library cards stand for."

"Is that the message we want to send our young readers?" Bunning added.

Others, such as Mansfield, OH mother of four Janet Hargrove, say that because library books are public property and libraries are funded by taxes, taxpayer money should not be used to promote one group's reading agenda.

"I don't want my tax dollars going to something I can't in good conscience support," Hargrove, 32, said. "Who knows what kind of books these people could check out? They could read about anything—even our children."

Some moderates who believe the country is not yet ready for full homosexual library-card access are proposing to state and local lawmakers a compromise solution in the form of a limited-access "Short-Term Government Literacy Loan" card. While the card would grant some borrowing privileges, it would have higher late-return penalties, shorter borrowing times, and may not be recognized as valid by all libraries within the municipality in which it was issued.