According to this story, a Christian conservative organization is all up in arms because Lifetime Television ran an ad for Applebee's during a show called "Gay Weddings." Please. Like this is anywhere near as upsetting as the Jimmy-Olsen-coming-out-of-the-closet thing mentioned last week. Like anyone really cares about where Applebee's commercials show up. I mean, isn't Applebee's the restaurant people go to when TGI Friday's and Chili's are just too fancy for them? (This venom comes from a really atrocious meal I had at an Applebee's one night, right before I took the GRE.)

And, of course, Applebee's is desperately backpedalling, insisting that they had requested that their ad not run during "controversial shows" like "Gay Weddings." Because, of course, if they advertise during a show like "Gay Weddings," well, the next thing you know, gay people might start coming to Applebee's, and all the nice, good, pure, Christian, Focused-on-the-Family folks might get gay cooties, or whatever the heck it is they're afraid of. And it's possible that if people of all sorts of different beliefs--sexual, religious, whatever--started associating with each other, it might just lead to some sort of horrible understanding of one another, which might consequently lead to hightened awareness and sympathy for the diversity and complexity of life, which would just be awful. Because, after all, if people start thinking that the world isn't just black and white, but a million shades of gray--or, even better, an explosion of an infinity of colors--then they might start realizing things like how maybe, just maybe, there's more to consider about stuff like going to war with Iraq beyond simple rhetoric like, "This country is determined to disarm Iraq and thereby bring peace to the world." And that just opens a whole new can of worms.

And, no, I'm not saying that this Applebee's thing is tied into the war-drum-thumping at all. But willful ignorance is a bad thing, in whatever form it takes, and I'm getting sick and tired of seeing people use it to gain the upper hand.

Something positive: To help our library promote Teen Read Week (the theme of which is Get Graphic @ Your Library), Dark Horse Comics sent us a bunch of posters and buttons.