Book Banning For Dummies

"..Some of those books teach bad stuff like murder..."

Yeah, like verse after verse of the Old Testament, for example.
Or The Book of Revelations.

I just read Richard Dawkins's THE GOD DELUSION; one of the more hair raising sections I read was how the biblical injunction 'Thou shalt not kill' (the Hebrew is closer to "Thou shalt not murder") was, originally, unambiguously understood to apply only as a proscription for in-group morality. E.g. no Jew on Jew killing.

The great Maimonides himself (Dawkins quoting) commenting that "of course", it did NOT apply to heathens. (Evidently, you may kill as many of those as you like) The universalist ethic that most moderns read into it today is a later-day modification & re-interpretation, not true to the original intent. (and I'd assert a direct by-product of humane, Enlightenment-based morality)

I honestly wonder how many High School libraries have the guts to add the latest from Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris & Dennett to their collections....our local public libraries (don't know about school libraries) DO carry the Dawkins book--and it was in such consistently high demand even a year after its initial publication I just gave up and bought my own copy (one hardback edition, and on audiobook CD, which is how I "read" it the first time through; I retain the hard-copy to refer back to later)

I have my own difficulties with Harris's THE END OF FAITH, but Sam Harris's LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION is so straight up, concise, and to the point, I just love it. I'd love to make it available to High School readers. END OF FAITH, too, of course, but not with the same level of enthusiasm.

I bet Christopher Hitchens's GOD IS NOT GREAT probably doesn't make it into many High School libraries, either.

Public Libraries, sure, but school libraries...can't say.

I don't envy the delicate balancing act that school librarians have to go through just to do their jobs...more so than other librarians in other types of libraries.

Update!

Lopez said she was disappointed with the vote to keep these books in school libraries, however, she said her fight isn’t over. She plans on appealing the decision and getting parents and others in the community to sign a petition. “I am going to the American Center for Law and Justice,” she said.

And her 15-year-old son Jesse, who attends Royal Palm Beach High, said he is on his mom’s side.

“I’m in support of my mom’s decision. Some of those books teach bad stuff like murder and abortion,” he said, adding, “The School Board really doesn’t know what goes on in the classroom. Some teachers are corrupt.”

He ended, “The moment we took God out of the school system is the moment everything went downhill.”

What I find hilarious is that it looks like she only did a keyword search and didn't read the books that that had hits on her query. They could have been about how homosexual atheist abortion doctors all go to hell. Like that Mormon county that had a law that textbooks couldn't mention homosexuality. Which might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but disallowed them from using most of the normal LDS approved textbooks because they mentioned homosexuality--as an abomination, of course.

--
"Ponies are atheists, you know, technically."
- Me

blames Columbine school shootings, drugs, bullies, teenage pregnancy

Well gee, the Columbine school shootings, a percentage of teen pregnancies and drug use (I'm not sure what percentage) can be attributed to bullies. Bullies can be attributed to bad parenting and general lack of self esteem.

"My kids are going to school to learn, not to become a homosexual or an abortion doctor or an atheist."

Or maybe a homosexual abortion doctor atheist who happens to worship the flying spaghetti monster and is actually a vampire by night that seeks out young virgins to suck the life blood of and by doing so directly decrease the number of virgin girls for men to marry. For that matter the presence of a vampire would actually encourage young virgins to loose their virginity (well, except for the ones that want to become immortal children of the night).

I flunked out of homosexuality and abortion doctoring, and barely got a passing grade in atheism.

- No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Book banning eh? So it okay to ban knowledge that does not support your view huh? I hate when stuff like this happen. You push everyone around you because your are majority but your oppressed when your in the minority. When atheism is more accepted, I hope we do not fall in the same fate...

I'm actually surprised, it's not northern Florida.

Since when does school teach you to "become a homosexual or an abortion doctor or an atheist." I'm annoyed by people who don't like facts, so they redefine terms or banish them altogether.

"My oldest son doesn't believe in God," she said. "I guess he kind of thinks I'm stupid." Perhaps she ca learn a thing to two from him...by listening?

It's remarkable, and remarkably annoying, how in the age of the "world wide" web, so many news websites don't think to put their city and state on their sites. But I'm pretty sure this is Florida.

Florida is the locale of so much weirdness, Fark.com has a special "Florida" tag for its stories.

Now, watch, the pussies at the school will probably cave. This is a red state, after all.

"My kids are going to school to learn, not to become a homosexual or an abortion doctor or an atheist."

Damn, things sure have changed from when I went to school because we didn't have any of those classes offered as electives in my high school or I would have taken a few of them for sure.

"My oldest son doesn't believe in God," she said. "I guess he kind of thinks I'm stupid."

Yeah, and a circle is kind of round.