America Under Siege By Christian Book Banners

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America is under siege from Christian fanatics who seek to control the government, and ban books they find contrary to their twisted view of the world, which includes worshipping mythological beings, and condemning all those who don’t ascribe to their bizarre beliefs.

Just a few books banned by Christian Crazies. Pic courtesy of magazine.bstheatre.com
Just a few books banned by Christian Crazies. Pic courtesy of magazine.bstheatre.com

The Kids’ Right to Read Project (KRRP), part of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), says in the last quarter of this year an increasing number of books that speak to race or sexuality, or are written by “minority” authors, have been removed from school shelves.

According to the NCAC, in November alone the KRRP dealt with three times the average number of incidents, investigating 49 book bannings or removals from shelves in 29 states, a 53% increase in activity from last year.  In the last half of the year the project challenged 31 incidents compared to 14 in the same period last year.

KRRP’s  Acacia O’Connor said:

Whether or not patterns like this are the result of co-ordination between would-be censors across the country is impossible to say. But there are moments, when a half-dozen or so challenges regarding race or LGBT content hit within a couple weeks, where you just have to ask ‘what is going on out there?’

Among the books which have been complained about were Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima.

Most of the challengers were parents of district students or library patrons, though a handful were local or state government officials. Of the more than two dozen incidents KRRP faced from September to December, the majority involved materials used in classroom instruction.

“It has been a sprint since the beginning of the school year,” said O’Connor. “We would settle one issue and wake up the next morning to find out another book was on the chopping block.”

However, the KRRP says it has also seen an increase in “challenged” books being returned to the shelves following the body’s involvement. This month saw two major victories: Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima was returned to English classrooms in Driggs, Idaho, and a ban on Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits was lifted at Watauga County Schools in Boone, North Carolina.

Among the other successes the KRRP counts was the situation involving the urban fantasy novel Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, which was removed from the shelves at schools in Alamogordo, New Mexico, following a single complaint by a parent. The school board later reinstated the book.

Neil Gaiman said today:

I’m just glad that organisations like the Kids’ Right to Read Project exist, and that so many of these challenges have successful outcomes – it’s obvious that without them, the people who do not want their children, or other people’s, exposed to ideas, would be much more successful at making books vanish from the shelves.

KRRP, co-founded by the NCAC and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and supported by the Association of American Publishers and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, says it’s difficult to estimate exactly how many books are challenged or removed as many incidents go unreported.

The KRRP also successfully tackled the proposed banning of The Diary of Anne Frank from schools in Northville, Michigan, where one parent complained that passages detailing Anne’s descriptions of her own body were “pornographic”, and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which was branded “anti-Christian”. The KRRP and NCAC “went to bat for [this book] more than any other work in 2013, facing challenges in Montana, New York, and two new cases in New Jersey and West Virginia.”

Sherman Alexie said censors are “punishing the imagination. That’s why we’re fighting them.”

Christian fanaticism must be stopped before it’s too late.  All right thinking people, both believers and nonbelievers alike, should, by any means necessary, work to stop the slow, yet insidious destruction of America’s freedom to think independent of Christian insanity.

Story contributions by guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013

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Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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r
10 years ago

Next thing you know they’ll want a book burning like Hitler did, only it’ll be of all atheist material. Oh, Hitch we miss you !

Marsha Woerner
10 years ago

Jess, by skipping _the Phantom Tollbooth_ and _Alice in Wonderland_, you are missing fabulous stories! I am not embarrassed to admit that Lewis Carroll is my favorite children’s author ever, and these stories have mathematics intertwined in them. _The Phantom Tollbooth is such a lot of fun! I got that as a gift for my husband when we were dating, and he was really sorry he hadn’t read it when he was younger. Just saying. But I agree with you on the Twilight stuff! And I have read many of the books listed, although I admit to having purposely skipped _Lord of the Flies_, which was required reading for my older sister, and again for my older son. Rebeccah, my sister, told me enough about it that I really was not interested in reading. Of course, part of what she told me is why I probably should never have read any parts of the Bible, but there you go :-). And let me tell you, _Alice in Wonderland_ had NOTHING to do with drugs, despite what some of the radical right would have you think! That was one that everyone was required to read in sixth grade at my junior high. I do know that there were (or there was at least one) parents who totally disagreed, and I’m really not sure what they did.

Jess
10 years ago

With the exception of the Twilight crap, Phantom tollbooth and Alice’s adventures in Wonderland I think I have read nearly everything else. Not to mention, this year for gifts, our oldest nephew is getting some Gaiman books to start a lifelong love of SciFi and fantasy, Neverwhere happens to be one of them.

Marsha Woerner
10 years ago

And if you feel inclined to make a donation to this worthy group, here is the location:
http://www.ncac.org/donate
I feel like such a typical American slut, making the majority of my donations at the end of the year. Sigh.

Jess
Reply to  Marsha Woerner
10 years ago

Don’t feel like that Marsha. Lots of people do their donating at the end of the year and hello, the places you donat4e to don’t care if it comes the 1st of January or the 31st of Decmeber, they will put that money to good use. I donate what I would have given to my alma mater had they not hired Sleeza Rice there, at the end of the year to a variety of different groups.

10 years ago

Does anyone else note the hypocrisy that the “Kid’s Right to Read Project” is involved in banning books?

Timmy Mahoney
10 years ago

If not careful these lunatics will continue to spread their poison and that will mean we’re all fucked. Stop these bastards!

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