# Book Burning, Georgia Style **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 11, 2006, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366 "2006-05-11T13:45:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jali](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecae2f/32.png) [@jali](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jali)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/1 "2006-05-11T13:45:52Z")
This woman wants Harry Potter out of school libraries. I pit this “Christian” woman who is campaigning against something she really knows nothing about. Her online “research” was visiting Christian sites and accepting their opinions about the Harry Potter Series. from the article: > [@](#): > > She admitted that \*\*she has not read the book series \*\* partially because “they’re really very long and I have four kids.” [here](http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=32&url_subchannel_id=&url_article_id=14074&change_well_id=2) is a link to news in Georgia. She says this: > [@](#): > > Mallory said she has been contacted by other Christian parents who were concerned about the content of the books. On her complaint form, she suggested they be replaced by **C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series** I don’t understand how “Christian” fantasy and magic is acceptable to someone who is campaigning against fantasy and magic in another series. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/2 "2006-05-11T13:53:58Z")
I wonder how many sites reported that Onion article as fact. I’d post a link, but I can’t seem to find it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/3 "2006-05-11T13:58:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Mallory wrote on her appeal forms that she was objecting to the books because of their “evil themes, witchcraft, demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, spells and teaching children all of this.” Weird. The Narnia books also include evil themes, witchcraft (including “good magic” practiced by the juvenile heroes and heroines), demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, and spells. Children in the books are exposed to “all of this”, and children who read the books are effectively being “taught” it. But nowhere in **either** series is it suggested that evil or murder or “demonic activity” should be regarded as a **good** thing. The only real difference is that the spells and sorcery and what-have-you in the Narnia books are part of a thinly-veiled Christian allegory, while those in the HP books are not. (And does anybody else think it’s hilarious that another school in this woman’s Georgia county school system is called “Dacula High School”? ) ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/4 "2006-05-11T14:01:15Z")
[QUOTE=Laura Mallory] I think the anti-Christian bias — it’s just got to stop. And if we don’t say something, we’ll just keep getting pushed out of the schools. And I pay taxes, too, and I think that gives me a voice to speak out about this. [/QUOTE] She is very far from the first “Christian” to try to ban the Harry Potter books. (I put “Christian” in quotes, because most Christians have no problem with them.) And she’s not going to be the last, unfortunately. ---
**Author:** ![jali](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecae2f/32.png) [@jali](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jali)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/5 "2006-05-11T14:07:36Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] I wonder how many sites reported that Onion article as fact. I’d post a link, but I can’t seem to find it. [/QUOTE] This was on the news here in Atlanta this morning - this is going before the Gwinnett (Atl metro area) school board here in Georgia. I wish it were an Onion article ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/6 "2006-05-11T14:17:48Z")
[QUOTE=jali] This was on the news here in Atlanta this morning - this is going before the Gwinnett (Atl metro area) school board here in Georgia. I wish it were an Onion article [/QUOTE] No, there was an Onion article years ago about Harry Potter and satanism. [Ah, here we go.](http://web.archive.org/web/20000815214418/http://www.theonion.com/onion3625/harry_potter.html) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/7 "2006-05-11T14:18:45Z")
No, **jali** , I think **asterion** ’s referring to the famous _Onion_ article about children learning HP-type witchcraft in schools, which was initially quoted by many gullible anti-HP advocates as a factual source. (I can’t find the original _Onion_ article now either.) [In preview: Doesn’t matter, because **asterion** could!] ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/8 "2006-05-11T14:25:34Z")
I’m still not sure which was funnier. The gullible anti-HP advocates taking the Onion as a source or the Chinese taking the Onion as a source with [this article](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27828). ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/9 "2006-05-11T15:08:43Z")
Dear Og, are people still on about Harry Potter? That is so 2000. You’d think they’d have the good sense to move on to The Amazing Race or something. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/10 "2006-05-11T15:14:21Z")
[QUOTE=jali] from the article: > [@](#): > > She admitted that **she has not read the book series** partially because “they’re really very long and I have four kids.” [/QUOTE] Followup question: Have you ever read _any_ books, you ignorant slag? ---
**Author:** ![DeadlyAccurate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@DeadlyAccurate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadlyAccurate)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/11 "2006-05-11T15:14:38Z")
I remember once the Readers’ Letters part of Reader’s Digest had a woman railing against HP. Her source: the Onion article. Seriously. RD kindly informed her that The Onion was a satire. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/12 "2006-05-11T15:24:33Z")
> [@](#): > > She admitted that she has not read the book series partially because “they’re really very long and I have four kids.” (How many of those four kids do you bet have read them, btw?) And it gets funnier: > [@](#): > > "I think it would be hypocritical for me to read all the books, honestly. I don’t agree with what’s in them. I don’t have to read an entire pornographic magazine to know it’s obscene,” Mallory said. See, if she doesn’t want kids to read books with bad stuff in them, then it would be hypocritical for her to read books that she thinks have bad stuff in them although she can’t know for sure whether they have bad stuff in them **because she hasn’t read them**. Thank Og at least her kids are going to the public elementary school instead of having her homeschool them, so they may get a little exposure to rudimentary logical thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/13 "2006-05-11T15:35:21Z")
[QUOTE=DeadlyAccurate] I remember once the Readers’ Letters part of Reader’s Digest had a woman railing against HP. Her source: the Onion article. Seriously. RD kindly informed her that The Onion was a satire. [/QUOTE] I remember that, too. If the magazine hadn’t belonged to the dentists’ office, I would have ripped out the page to hang on my refrigerator. From my years in a Christian school, I know how succeptible some Christians can be to urban legends and rumors. In chapel one morning, the principal brought out an e-mail she had recieved detailing how half of Proctor and Gamble’s profits went to the Church of Satan and that the CEO had bragged about it on a daytime talk show. She gave us a list of their products and told us not to buy them. After chapel, I informed her that she needed to be “careful” in spreading that story because Proctor and Gamble was so sick of this many-times-debunked tale that they were suing anyone they caught spreading it. She also told us that children in China and Russia were routinely lined up at school and ordered to spit on a Bible and those who refused were shot. (Mind you, I graduated in 1996.) She also played records for us backwards to try to detect satanic messages, and informed us that K.I.S.S stood for “Kings in Satanic Service.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/14 "2006-05-11T16:09:02Z")
> [@Lissa](#): > > From my years in a Christian school, I know how succeptible some Christians can be to urban legends and rumors. I don’t think it’s the Christianity that does it, I think it’s the institution of the Sunday service sermon. I was quite startled some years ago when I started attending church services and heard some of the ridiculous junk that got into the sermons. (And this was a quite well-educated pastor in what’s generally considered a more “upper-class” denomination, at a well-to-do church in a university town.) And I still remember a story a Unitarian friend (and professional astronomer) told me about being asked by his minister to preview her Christmas sermon discussing hypotheses of astronomical phenomena that might have inspired the Star of Bethlehem references in the New Testament. He pointed out to her that in fact, all of the hypotheses she mentioned have been pretty thoroughly debunked and there’s no convincing evidence for any of them. She thanked him and went on to give the sermon exactly as originally written, with no acknowledgement whatsoever that the “scientific basis” was mythical. :eek: I think there’s a bad institutional culture among sermon-writers in this respect, where the notion seems to be that the important thing is the doctrinal or ethical point they’re trying to make, so it’s immaterial whether their allegedly factual examples and anecdotes about it are actually true or not. So they will shamelessly launch right into “A recent study found…” or “As Abraham Lincoln once remarked…” and to hell with the fact-checking. I know a sermon needn’t have the same standards of scholarship as, say, published research. But yeesh, there ought to be at least some concern for not spreading outright lies and misinformation and making yourself look intellectually lazy, dishonest, or ignorant. You wouldn’t serve your congregation spoiled mayonnaise at the church supper, and you shouldn’t feed them unsubstantiated rumors and urban legends in the Sunday sermon either. I say all seminaries should have a mandatory course on using Snopes. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/15 "2006-05-11T16:36:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Mallory said she has been contacted by other Christian parents who were concerned about the content of the books. On her complaint form, she suggested they be replaced by C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series [Little did she know…](http://www.balaams-ass.com/journal/homemake/cslewis.htm) _(Cue ominous music.)_ ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/16 "2006-05-11T16:46:33Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] I know a **sermon** needn’t have the same standards of scholarship as, say, published research. But yeesh, there ought to be at least some concern for not spreading \*\*outright lies and misinformation \*\* and making yourself look **intellectually lazy, dishonest, or ignorant**. [/QUOTE] [Channeling **Der Trihs**]You are being redundant here! I hate America![/C **DT**] [QUOTE=Lissa] "…and informed us that K.I.S.S stood for “Kings in Satanic Service.” [/QUOTE] She was grossly mistaken. It actually stands for “Kids in Satan’s Service.” Jeez…some people. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f0a364/32.png) [@Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rube_E.Tewesday)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/17 "2006-05-11T16:55:18Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] [ She was grossly mistaken. It actually stands for “Kids in Satan’s Service.” Jeez…some people. 😃 [/QUOTE] My God! Does no one know it stands for “Knights in Satan’s Service?” What kind of drivel are people circulating out there?! ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/18 "2006-05-11T16:57:42Z")
I thought it was “Knights In Satan’s Service.” And W.A.S.P stands for “We Are Satan’s Pawns.” ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/19 "2006-05-11T17:03:24Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] [Little did she know…](http://www.balaams-ass.com/journal/homemake/cslewis.htm) _(Cue ominous music.)_ [/QUOTE] Oh my Og! That’s just mind-blowing. Clearly Catholics are just one small step away from outright Satanism themselves, but why would they want a “plant”??? 😕 The scary thing is that this guy has the intelligence to be literate and fairly well-spoken, at least on paper (Og, two analogies - we need a new set of expressions!). ---
**Author:** ![Dijon\_Warlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9a28c/32.png) [@Dijon\_Warlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dijon_Warlock)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366/20 "2006-05-11T17:47:50Z")
I thought it was “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” Learn something new every day, I does. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-burning-georgia-style/356366.md?page=2)