Hi everyone -- banning the books

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 159617


> Tonks:
> I agree with Ken on this one.  Liberal atheists DO try to ban as 
> many things as the Conservative Christians do.   Basically they 
try 
> to ban anything that has any religious overtones, everything 
> from "under God" in the pledge of allegiance to the term "Merry 
> Christmas", not just in government but in the whole of society. 
And 
> they do ban books from schools too.

Magpie:

OTT, but this is a pet peeve of mine.  I do agree with Ken that 
conservative Christians don't have the monopoly on censorship by any 
means--there are countries where religion has been banned so it can 
hardly be said that being an atheist=being tolerant or open-minded.  
It just means you lack a belief in a deity.  

However, removing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegience is not 
an example of such.  It simply removes a statement in the belief of 
a deity from a Pledge that has nothing to do with such--two words 
that were only added in the 1950s in order to connect a certain 
religious belief with having allegience to the American flag, two 
things that do not have to go together at all.  (The idea was to say 
that we weren't communists--we all believed in the entity 
called "God" in America.")  

Nor have I seen any evidence that anyone has tried to ban "Merry 
Christmas" from the whole of soceity.  Every time I've heard of this 
it's been someone claiming that anyone using the more 
inclusive "Happy Holidays" (which has always been an alternate 
greeting for Christmas-celebrators since it includes New Years) 
instead of the more specific "Merry Christmas" is some sort of 
attack on Christmas.

Sorry, but it really irritates me when anyone claims that not making 
everyone say they believe in God in any way equates to banning God 
from society.

As to what the HP books teach, it probably can't be boiled down.  I 
tend to think they teach rather wonky lessons a lot of the time, so 
I hold off from commenting, but obviously the kids are against 
bigoted slurs, they stand up for people who are being picked on.  I 
think the best lessons are yet to be learned when we see the chances 
Dumbledore takes with Slytherins pan out, and especially when Harry 
learns to work with people who don't make it easy.  (Perhaps then 
I'll see "right versus easy" in action--I haven't seen it much yet, 
to be honest.)


-m