Another Anti-HP Site (yawn)

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 8076

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Dinah" <betty_belladonna at f...> 
wrote:
> > Of course, no mention is made of any other children's fantasy 
novel
> > that contains many of the same elements (if not more) of the Harry
> > Potter books.  No mention is made of fairy tales, of folklore, of
> > even certain passages of the Bible that you don't read to your
> > children.
> 
> Some christian society (I've forgotten the name of this one) said 
that
> Philip Pullman's books are even more bunrworthy than the HP books. 
That was
> a sentence that frightened, because if you get to *burning books* 
you're
> already quite far down the fashist lane.
> 
I think sometimes there's a tendency on this group to over-caricature 
evangelicals.   Do they pose a genuine threat to HP or are they 
merely rogue boggarts that transform themselves – with our full 
cooperation – into our most horrifying nightmare?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK evangelicals have not succeeded in 
a number of decades in "banning" or "burning" any book in this 
country – i.e., they have not caused any volume to become widely 
unavailable to the public at large. At worst, they have had books 
removed from school libraries or stopped books from being taught in 
class, and/or tried to discourage people from reading them.   This 
seems to be the thrust of the anti-HP site that Ebony referenced for 
us.  We may not agree with this, but that is a vastly different thing 
than censorship (e.g., making a work difficult or impossible to 
access, and making the possession of it a crime – as in the Soviet 
Union, when Solzhenitsyn was only available through "samizdat", and 
you could do hard time if a copy were found in your possession). We 
may also disagree with their rationale for opposing HP, but certainly 
there are a number of groups across the political spectrum who have 
attempted (with varying degrees of success) the very same thing with 
literary works which they dislike (just think of Huckleberry Finn).   

Now, it may be argued that evangelicals would institute such Draco-
nain restrictions if only they had the power.  Perhaps.  But they 
don't and in my measured judgment they never will.  America is too 
fragmented (or "diverse," if you like a nicer word).  Cromwell is not 
coming back, and Cotton Mather reigns no more.  Evangelicals sense 
this too, and one should note the strong element of powerlessness and 
despair that emanates from their writings on cultural affairs. And 
why not? You would have a much easier time getting The Chamber of 
Secrets taught in a public school these days than you would the Book 
of Genesis or the Gospel of Matthew – despite the obvious fact that 
large chunks of Western cultural and political history (not to 
mention Lloyd Webber musicals) are rendered incomprehensible to 
anyone ignorant of these writings.  And "belief" has nothing to do 
with it– even the militant atheist Nietzsche declared that "Compared 
to the Bible, everything else is merely literature." 

         - CMC