tfp27

                      BEWARE! BIBLE COULD BE BANNED!
(Written under the psuedonym, "George Steinkrueger", and published 4 September 1996 in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted in toto with Preface and Epilogue 18 September 2001)

PREFACE -- The former Dee Norton lived just a couple of blocks up the street from me in Little Rock. Dee became upset when her son brought home one of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books. You see, Dee found it to be offensive and encouraging of violence to females. So, Dee complained. And complained. And complained. Dee complained so much, she attracted the attention of the local Little Rock media.
     About the same time that Dee was complaining, a six-year-old girl by the name of Morgan Nick was abducted from a park in western Arkansas near a ballfield where her parents were watching a game. A statewide search for Morgan proved to be fruitless, and as far as I am aware, Morgan was never found.

        Dee Norton is an unabashed liberal and proud of it. She graduated from Hendrix College, the bastion of liberalism. She owns a tie-die shirt shop. She drives around Little Rock in a "flower power" VW van. She makes hemp (i.e. marijuana) jewelry.
       What, then, could Dee have in common with the religious right? Both believe that a suggestion, be it read, seen, or heard, can cause a person to behave a certain way. In other words, man lacks any ability to reason, and merely reacts to the latest command like a mindless automaton. And, since mankind has no ability to think for itself, then we must be protected from ourselves through "selective" censorship.
       For those of you who don't know the story, Ms. Norton has been on a one woman crusade for over a year now. It seems that her son brought a book home from the school library that depicted graphic violence against women. Ms. Norton was offended by the book, and asked the school librarian to not let her boy check it out anymore. As there are several hundred students in the school, this was an unreasonable request; how could one librarian be able to monitor what all those children are checking out? That librarian couldn't, and shouldn't have been expected to.
       It made no difference to Ms. Norton, though. She was unhappy with the lack of cooperation, so she asked the school principal to remove the book. The principal said no. Then she asked the PTA, which was not quite as nice about it. Basically, she was told by the PTA that it was her responsibility to monitor her child, not the school's, and that what she was proposing was censorship. She appealed to the Little Rock School Board, and was told the same thing: such a removal of books is censorship.
       When local columnist John Robert Starr stated that he, too, thought it was censorship, Dee responded by saying that it was not censorship, but the protection of little girls. Dee claimed that this type of book is what caused the abduction of Morgan Nick, and banning this book will eliminate crimes against children and women. In a nutshell, people change their behavior based on what they read.
       This theory is the same one that the religious right has promoted for years. However, according to some liberals including Dee, when book bannings are proposed by the religious right, it is censorship! What's the difference between what Dee wants and what the religious right wants? Absolutely nothing.
       The fundamental question, then, is are we empty vessels easily swayed by the power of suggestion? Absolutely not. If we were, then every Christian and Jew in the world would be incestuous, a murderer, or a rapist. After all, the Old Testament has several graphic descriptions of rape, mutilation, incest, and murder. Take, for example, Chapter 19 of Judges. Within Chapter 19 is the story of a traveler, who, in an effort to save himself from a mob of men, grabs his concubine, throws her out the door of the house where they were guests, and tells the crowd to have their way with her. They beat her and rape her repeatedly, and she dies with her hands on the door. The next morning, the man carries the corpse home, and proceeds to carve it up and send the pieces throughout the land.
       Or take the story of Lot's daughters. Fearing that they would be spinsters, they get their father drunk and have relations with him.
       If we really are empty vessels, we should read daily about someone throwing his wife to a mob to be raped, and then cutting her up into a million pieces afterwards. However, this is not a common occurrence, even though millions of people have read Chapter 19 of Judges. Thus, the theory is flat out wrong.
       It is time, then, to stop promoting this idea. Banning books is wrong. People have the capacity to reason. A book does not create a criminal.
       If all books containing graphic violence (or sex) are banned, then the Bible (as well as much of Shakespeare) will have to be banned as well. Is this what we want? Viva la difference. If you don't like it, don't read it. But don't tell me that I can't.

EPILOGUE -- It would probably be a safe bet to say that some in conservative, fundamentalist Beebe probably thought George was some left-wing wacko to ever discuss the possibility of trying to ban the Bible. But, there have been attempts in several school districts to do just that. George brought up the idea not because he found the Bible to be offensive, but to illustrate the point that offensiveness is in the eye of the beholder, and that what one may consider to be Holy, another may consider to be offensive.