Texas Religious Leaders Try To Get Public Libraries To Ban Vampire Books For Them
from the church-and-state dept
Public libraries: they're important. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, somebody is going to have to explain to me why we occasionally see people attempt to take books out of libraries on either religious or decency grounds. It seems to me that these people often need a lecture on the First Amendment and how they probably want to be careful about eroding its protections. The latest in need of such a lecture is a group of Texas religious leaders who are circulating a letter demanding a local public library remove all works of fiction that have to do with vampires and the occult.
Phillip Missick and other religious leaders have called on the Austin Memorial Library to remove books about vampires, demons and other magical beings from the teen section. Missick is circulating a petition that requests that the "occultic and demonic room be shut down, and these books be purged from the shelves, and that public funds would no longer be used to purchase such material, or at least require parents to check them out for their children," according to the Cleveland Advocate.Missick's reasoning for this is the same moral panic crap we've written about so often: if children read about the occult, they'll end up being demonic little hooligans or whatever. It's Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and chess all over again. But it's all the more egregious when a religious leader calls for the removal of secular funds from a public institution to fulfill his religious views. We don't do that in America. Let me show Pastor Missick why we don't do that, using one of his own statements.
"This is dark. There's a sexual element. You have creatures that aren't human. I think it's dangerous for our kids," Missick, a pastor at King of Saints Tabernacle of Cleveland, told KTRK.Now, let me think what other books that might exist that I could argue contain dark literature, sexual elements, and creatures that aren't human? Oh, I know! How about the bible? Plenty that could be considered dark, what with the detailed descriptions of war and Cain killing Abel and all that. Sexual elements? Oh, you betcha, what with the incestuous date-rape of Lot by his daughters and the orgies and whatnot. Non-human creatures? Well, you know, there's God, angels, and demons, so yeah. Most public libraries carry the bible in the reference section, alongside the equally dark-n-sexy religious texts from other major religions.
So, are we going to ban the bible in public libraries because of this? Shall we insist no public funds go to buying religious texts, including the bible? Of course not, because libraries aren't for partisan texts, they're for all texts that have value to the public, including texts we may not care for. You can't understand literature if you don't have a basic understanding of religious texts and you can't understand the current realm of young-adult fiction if you don't have access to vampire books. Sad, but that's the way it is.
So, hey, to my religious friends: stop trying to ban books. You're chipping away at a federal law that allows you to exist.
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Filed Under: banning, books, moral panic, phillip missick, public libraries, texas, vampires
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And Texan Twilight fans weep
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Just eliminate the libraries.
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Too late. Now we're arguing about the Dewey Decimal System.
See what you started??!! ;-)
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Well, no, they haven't. According to Austin Memorial Library's online catalog (linked from www.austinmemlib.org ), their copy is cataloged under "Adult Non-Fiction".*
Whether that's appropriate is of course another matter. Would you prefer it be put in the "Fiction" section? It would probably get good exposure there.
*Dewey Decimal System (which this library uses for its catalog) puts it under 200, "Religion". Dewey uses 000 for "General Works, Computer Science, and Information" (which include reference titles such as almanacs and encyclopedias).
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I would prefer it go in the "Religion" section, along with most of the other occult books.
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This library is probably too small (or thinks its too small) to have a separate religion section. The Qu'ran is also in the Adult Non-Fiction section.
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Nonsense
Stuff can move around and labels can be adjusted as needed.
If it works for my little DVD collection, it can work for any library.
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Okay. Let's get them in the pre-teen section today.
"This is dark. There's a sexual element. You have creatures that aren't human. I think it's dangerous for our kids," Missick, a pastor at King of Saints Tabernacle of Cleveland, told KTRK.
How could he possibly know?
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"Vaccines cause Autism" despite numerous scientific studies and evidence that prove otherwise.
"Global Warming is not man-made" or "does not exist." despite numerous scientific studies and evidence that prove otherwise.
"Burn the Vampire books because they create evil demon-worshiping children" despite evidence that proves otherwise.
Fuck hard scientific evidence, believe in what I say because faith! Burn the heretics!
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Irrational beliefs simply play into the hysteria more easily than ones that can be easily checked and lend themselves to subtlety and nuance.
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I have to admit...
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Now that's a hard choice...
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This is an easily soluble problem
Liberated from the oppression of the United States and its pesky Constitution, Texas can pursue its own goals: lowering its education standards even further, striving to make illiteracy the rule rather than merely the norm, putting religious fanatics in charge of critical public functions, arming everyone with assault weapons, and making racism and bigotry part of the state motto.
In this idyllic future paradise, Texans will be able to ban not just these particular books, but ALL books, in their unceasing quest to outdo the more violent parts of central and south America as the worst shithole in the Americas.
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Re: This is an easily soluble problem
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It would be fascinating to see what kind of constitution they would set up. I wonder how many of its provisions would be about gun rights. ;-)
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You have a religious group worried about imaginary creatures that don't exist influencing the children. Never mind this imaginary friend in another book they use as their guidelines.
It's almost but not quite as bad as another group over in the Middle East willing to cut off heads of people over their imaginary friend.
So how long will it take to get the good Reverend to go and fight for his imaginary friend? Bet it gets real quiet about that point.
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Writing letters about removing books from public libraries* is almost as bad as beheading someone? o_O
* it is worth noting that writing and sending letters is an activity protected by the 1st Amendment
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Nah, you're not seeing it from the right frame of view. Vampires are fictional evil monsters that destroy our children. The bible is a historical record of REAL angels, demons, and God.
Obviously. Now go give me two Hail Mary's, and Our Father, and promise never to do it again.
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As Arthur C Clarke Said ...
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"You're hopeless and there's nothing you can do about it."
Great moral starting point...
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'You gave me what I asked for, not what I wanted!'
Librarian: So you want the books pulled for containing 'dark, sexual elements, and non-human creatures'?
Religious representative: Exactly, such things should be kept out of the reach of children, as they could easily cause damage to their developing minds.
Librarian: Hmm, alright, I suppose I can see that, we'll pull all books that include that sort of thing.
R.R.: Thank you, we knew you'd see the light.
Librarian: Including, or should I say especially, the bible, which contains all that and more. If vampire books are damaging to the minds of children, obviously the bible would be just as bad, if not worse.
And then you'd get to watch the special pleading and scrambling to explain that no, the violence, sexual content, and otherworldly creatures in the bible are somehow different, and don't count.
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Re: 'You gave me what I asked for, not what I wanted!'
They would probably, without any sense of irony, pull out some sort of argument based on the 1st Amendment.
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Re: Bah, who cares. Vampire books sucks anyways
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Most people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Most of us would also really like to be able to speak an incantation or wave a magic wand and do things like turn an irritating person into a ferret, or have our homes magically clean themselves, etc. etc. However we accept that is a pleasant daydream, and something to be found firmly in the classification of fiction.
The tiny amount of people who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality have a serious mental illness and need help.
Which leads me to the big problem - Where were the parents/teachers/church leaders when these "impressionable" teens were developing the serious mental illness that led to this sort of delusion?
Wouldn't a better thing to be focusing on would be making sure that teens with mental health problems actually got help? Then you can leave the rest of to either enjoy or scorn this literature in peace.
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Secret Squirrel
They are kind of cool this way.
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A Canticle For Leibowitz
Meanwhile, the typical unthinkingly fascist mindset of your average American is on display yet again: "We should do this thing because it is right. It is right because I say that it is right. None shall be allowed to disagree with me because I am right."
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Re: A Canticle For Leibowitz
Had dreams about being trapped under shit for weeks afterwards.
Excellent piece of work that.
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Re: A Canticle For Leibowitz
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Whelp he is going to be pretty mad when they remove all religious books as well with all those demons and magic beings in them....
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Vampire TM
You see, in the beginning, vampires were Un-Dead creatures from Christian mythology, fearing the wrath of God and cringing at the very sight of a crucifix or a priest.
Now however, Hollywood has stolen the concept and altered it to create the new Vampires - sexy living beasts of great power and speed who can make love to a woman for days on end and whose very glance is enough to initiate near orgasmic reactions in living females.
I can understand very well why Christians would be upset.
Too bad they're not willing to admit they created vampires to scare adherents into terrorised submission. Then they could just scream Copyright Infringement and make millions suing Hollywood.
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Hmmmm
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