Um... maybe I'm crazy... or insensitive... or biased... but I don't see how it insults the memory of Anne Frank to imagine that the diarist got to experience romantic love and physical intimacy before she was murdered by the Nazis. I'm not vouching for the "controversial novel." I'm just saying the reaction to it betrays a certain worldwide cultural sex-negativity. It's not as if the novelist imagines an Anne who snuck out of the hiding place to turn tricks in Amsterdam's red light district.

The novel, called “Annexed,” and written by Sharon Dogar, is told from the point of view of Peter van Pels, a teenage son of the Dutch family called the van Daans in Anne’s diaries. A report published Sunday in The Times of London said the novel included scenes of Peter yearning for and having a physically intimate relationship with Anne.

You know what? I hope that happened. And I don't see how it trivializes the Holocaust or insults Anne Frank's memory to create a work of fiction in which that happens.

Insisting that every last one of your saints—along with your savior and his mom—was a virginal, sexless holybot during his/her time on earth is a longstanding Catholic hangup. I wasn't aware that it had been adopted for Jewish and secular saints too.