There may come a day (I doubt it) when my books are banned by a school librarian, or a local board, or a state legislator, or by Congress.

Maybe just because they feature a bisexual character and a gay character, who are treated like people, who love and are loved like anyone else, who have abilities and gifts and ambitions, and use them within a community to make life better for all.

Perhaps it will be because they portray Cherokee and other original people as folks inheriting a past full of U.S. government committing crimes and atrocities against them.

Or maybe because there are even white characters who express doubt in the sanctity of government and its motives and modus operandi.

Or just because someone doesn’t like my books and lies about what’s in them, never putting a specific complaint into words about them. Maybe they’ll only be three more in a long long list of books to be banned. And the crowd will, you know, go along with it, too pure to stain themselves by reading them or too frightened to dissent.

It may never happen. In the unlikely event that it does, it will probably happen long after I am gone and I will not be around to defend myself and my works.

So let me take the opportunity right now to address the self-righteous bastards who ban books and cheat others out of the experience of expanding their points-of-view with visions that go beyond their own:

What in the name of hell makes you think that you would ever again be noble enough to utter the word “freedom?”