Web Resources for Banned Books Week

The Illinois Institute of Familes Who Decide for All the Others
1. Ideas do, indeed, have consequences. Keller’s personal experience that reading about serial killers, ax murderers, and remorseless poisoners didn’t turn her into a murderer is lousy evidence for her unproven implicit claim that literature has no capacity to change people.

Literature does change people. But writers aren’t the Borg. You argue that it’s fatuous and simplistic to say “no one ever became an axe murderer by reading “The Axe Murderer”… ” and at the same time claim that young adults who read about sex or see the word “fuck” will be permanently harmed. Which is it?

2. Not every novel, play, essay, or short story is appropriate at every age.

I’m not sure I see the point here. Everyone agrees on that. What we DISagree on is your right to decide for every other parent.

3. Books that never appear on the shelves of libraries, that is, books that the ALA’s de facto censorship protocols (aka “Collection Development Policies”) never allow to be purchased can’t be banned.

Ok, you got me. I’ll concede that since libraries can’t buy every book ever written then you are allowed to get rid of the dirty ones you don’t like. I also can’t hate the food I don’t buy. Does that make me a gourmand?

4. Banning a book, or more accurately, making a book less easily accessible to children, may keep dangerous, destructive, deviant ideas and images out of the minds and hearts of children or delay the age at which they’re exposed to them.

What an excellent idea for you and your family. Why don’t you keep it there?

Do you know what my personal views are regarding the suffocating, narrow-minded, self-righteous zealotry that is your chosen religion and political view point? It would make you sick.

Is it my business to make sure that no one gets to read anything about it? Nope. I even buy copious amounts of information on it for my library to make sure you and your friends are adequately represented in the public square.

THAT is advanced citizenship, Banny McBansalot.