The New Orleans Picayune reports on state legislators choice of an official state book.
Representative Thomas Carmody (R-Shreveport), originally filed a bill to declare a specific copy of a Bible, found in the Louisiana State Museum system, the official state book. But by the time he presented the proposal to the committee, he changed language in his legislation to make the generic King James version of the Bible, a text used worldwide, the official state book.
Michael Weil, who heads up the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, said his organization — which is cultural and not religious in nature — hasn’t take a stance on the bill. But the legislation gives him some personal pause. “I think the state should consider a text that is not religious,” he said.
Another story on the same subject from NPR. And opinion from the ACLU: The bill “represents the use of religion to discriminate against Louisianians of minority faiths or who do not adhere to that particular book as part of their belief system. The bill will create more problems than it will solve by telling some Louisianians that their belief system is not full equal,” the state ACLU says.
Jebus
I like the King James bible because Jebus wrote that one in Murican.
Tolerance
Librarians–militantly tolerant of everyone, except those who don’t agree with us. But unlike their offensive words and actions, our offensive words and actions are justified because it’s the other person who is the problem.
Librarians
What are you counting as librarian objection to this?
I should have been clear that
I should have been clear that I was responding to the first commenter, not the story.
Hmm?
Possibly the most influential book in the history of the English language. What’s the issue here?
Problem
No problem to have in the library. I have a problem with it being designated the state book. A religious text like the bible should not be a state book.
If you are intellectually honest and you are okay with the KJV being the state book you should also be okay if we made the Quran the state book. Personally I would be opposed to either being the state book of the state.
Correct
A state book should be something actually connected to the state. Even the ‘special’ edition this started with is not applicable due to it’s content.
The only real exclusion to this is Utah with their own home created religious fiction. That would be acceptable.