Book Banning

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 8117

Hi --

Caius Marcius wrote:

> 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).

While I see the distinction you're trying to make CMC, I'm not sure
you're using the word "censorship" entirely appropriately.  According to
my dictionary, censorship is the act or process of censoring.
"Censoring" is to examine and expurgate.  "Expurgate" is to cleanse or
purge.  "Purge" is, among other things, to "remove."  There's nothing in
any of these definitions to square entirely with your notion that
censorship is only in play if it applies to a wide segment of a
population or carries extreme penalties for violation.  In other words,
isn't it still "censorship" if a religious group is successful in having
the HP books (as an example) removed from a small local library that
serves a community of say 200 people?  Sure, those 200 people could
perhaps drive 20 miles to the nearest larger community where the books
had not been banned, so complete "access" has not been removed.  But, in
the final analysis, wasn't what happened in my hypothethical community
of 200 people still censorship?

Having books removed from libraries or enacting regulations that
prohibit certain books from being read in school classrooms *is* in my
mind nothing short of censorship.  Those students or people can
certainly typically gain access to the books through some other source,
but their ordinary channels of supply have been cut off, because some
other group of persons was successful in limiting free choice to
available works of literature, art, etc.

I would also argue that censorship of this nature is in fact a dangerous
trend for our society.  It's dangerous because of what we lawyers like
to refer to as the "slippery slope" argument: if you ban one book for
objectionable content, it's not too much longer before you're banning
lots of other books right along with it.

The above scenario has played out only very recently in a small
community south of Houston, Santa Fe, Texas (side note: this is the same
community that took school prayer to the Supreme Court last term).
Several religious groups banded together with a proposal that the Harry
Potter books be banned from school libraries and classrooms.  The School
Board in Santa Fe eventually voted to (a) allow the books to remain in
the library but only permit students to check them out with parental
permission forms, (b) ban students from overtly loaning the books to one
another on the sly, and (c) prohibit the books from being read to
students in classrooms.  All the above doesn't seem too completely
unreasonable at first blush, right?  Well .... except that the next
thing you know, that same coalition of religious groups decided that
they wanted to ban all books from school libraries that contained even a
single profane word.  This would result in removing literally hundreds
of books from those school libraries, many of them readily acknowledged
as "classics."  This measure was only voted down by the slimmest of
margins (one vote).

So, you may argue that I'm judgmental & extremist in my own way for
"overstating" the dangers posed by book banning, but I'll consider it a
dangerous precedent all the same.

> 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).

Is banning Huck Finn any less dangerous to our society than banning HP?

> 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.

I suppose you have more confidence in the likely interpretation to be
given to the Bill of Rights by our Supreme Court than I do at the
moment.  <g>

Penny


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