I admit a lot of my feelings on the issue are colored by “you seriously even open the bedside drawer in your hotel room? I never go in there UNLESS I’m looking specifically for the Gideon bible for some reason.” So part of this is as incomprehensible to me as checking under your front door mat for spam mail–sure it’s possible someone put it there, but why are you bothering to spend the effort?
Frankly, it still boils down to destroying speech you don’t like, which I find reprehensible in any instance. Argue with it, counter it, but don’t pretend treating a Bible like litter is actually going to change anyone’s mind in any positive way. (For the record, since I’m sure it matters to someone, I’m Zen Buddhist. The question of God and religious doctrine is totally irrelevant to me.)
I also admit to a bit of this feeling as well–even the most hateful propoganda is of value in understanding the enemy, as it were. And even then, it’s still A BOOK (says my gut feelings), you don’t destroy it just because you don’t like it. Yeah, in some context Dio is right that there’s a similarity to junk mail, but really it’s A BOOK to my gut.
You’re wasting the hotel staff’s time and energy to replace it. Also, if you toss it in the wastebasket, it’s going to the landfill, which is more resources wasted.
So again, what is the positive benefit to throwing it out?
I’m having a hard time grasping why people are getting so angry with a hotel patron throwing away a Bible that was meant for them. Does it change anything if the guest took the Bible home, read it, then threw it away when they decided it wasn’t for them?
I think the idea of throwing away a Bible just ofends some people’s sensibilities from the outset, and so they’re trying to reverse engineer a reason for why it’s wrong to do it with a Bible that’s been abandoned in one’s own private space.
I think other people still conceptualize the Bible as being part of the room, like the furniture and coffee maker, so throwing it away feels like vandalizing hotel property, but the hotels don’t pay for them and really don’t care what happens to them.
The Gideons also know that a certain number of books (really quite a small number statistically, though) will be trashed or defaced, and they accept that as a possible outcome when the put the Bibles in the room.
Really, it’s a very rare occurrance that someone does that, though. The vast majority of people (even the atheists) leave them alone. More people take them home than deface them or trash them, and not that many people even take them home.
Also, I suspect that most of the maids who find ianzin’s Bibles in a wastebasket – as long as they’re still intact and not covered with taco sauce or anything – just take them out and put them right back in the drawer.
Sometimes the local churches will do a graveyard of crosses and have a sign saying each cross represents so many souls aborted. It makes me want to make a similiar display…featuring coat hangers and each one stands for a woman who died from an illegal abortion.
I thought they were the property of Rocky Raccoon?
As for the OP-no, that’s a really shitty thing to do. I might get annoyed if I see an anti-choice poster, or something that advertised “re-orientation therapy”, but why would I vandalize it? I’d get just as annoyed if they did the same to a Planned Parenthood advertisement. “Do unto others”, and all that?
The closest I’ve come is the time I found some Chick-type tracts in the bathroom when I worked at Kmart and passed them around to my coworkers. (I know people who collect Chick tracts just for the humor value)
Just to answer the OP, which I don’t think I ever did, I pretty much never do stuff like that, but I do understand the impulse.
Actually there was this one time in college when I was working in the music library on campus. Some Campus Crusaders had left a small stack of gay-bashing pamphlets on the check out desk (where I worked). I tossed them in the garbage. Never lost a minute’s sleep over it. I saw stuff like that on campus all the time and generally ignored it, but no way was I going to help them distribute it during my work shift. I considered it as equivalent to Nazi or Klan literature.
I think the idea of a Bible just offends some people’s sensibilities from the outset, and so they’re trying to reverse engineer a reason why it’s OK to trash one that’s been made available for a temporary occupier who might want to read it.
But really? I’m still pretty immature and might go as far as drawing a moustache on Jesus or something, but then again I’d do that to posters of celebrities I don’t like, if i have a pen handy.
I wouldn’t go as far to send the card with the fake address though
I will never do it because I’m not a Hater, but due to the enlightenment I have found on the SDMB, I reserve the right to destroy any & all literature, notices, etc. of any religious or political view I disagree with that is left in a public place.
I am also sending $10 each this week to the Gideons, some local pro-life group, and a Messianic Jewish ministry (maybe J4J, maybe the ones that are Assemblies of God-sponsored).
But I will not destroy any anti-Bible, pro-choice, or anti-missionary Jewish material I find in a public place (even though I have the right to)- and why is this?
Is it still jerkish to take the bible home, put it on my shelf, and never read it? What if I have a collection of bibles (that I don’t read)? Is my personal desire to extend my bible collection justification enough to create the extra work of replacing the bibles in my hotel rooms after I depart?
A Bible left without permission in one’s own private space offends some sensibilities, and the person who confesses to disposing of them has been upfront about that.
They don’t need a reason to trash their own property, and disposing of offensive material found abandoned in one’s own private rented space should cause no offense to anybody else. They didn’t give permission for the offensive material to be abandoned in their privare space to begin with. They don’t have to reverse engineer a reason to get rid of it. It’s no different than disposing of scat porn found in the room.
What you can’t get around is that the person throwing away the Gideon Bible is throwing away his own personal property. That’s why you’re stuck trying to reverse engineer an objection, while that person disposing of it needs to justify nothing.
What you can’t get around is that someone who isn’t a jerk can very well avoid having his sensibilities offended by leaving the Gideon Bible where it is, in the reasonable expectation that someone else might like it. And even you know you’re reaching, because you have to pretend it’s the same as disposing of scat porn.
Before the rented room was your personal space, no-one needed your permission to leave anything there. After you’re gone, it will no longer be offending you. While you are there, it is a small unobtrusive red book which you, being the objective rational thinker you are, can dismiss as an antiquated tome of primitive superstitions having no power to offend you. That anyone chooses to make further issue of it speaks volumes about their own issues and maturity.
I don’t think people are missing the point about it being that person’s personal property. There are lots of things that the hotel leaves in there, considering that it might not be there when you leave, and that’s just fine. You can take the soap, the shampoo, the laundry bag, and no one will object or charge you for it. I think where people are getting stuck is in a different place. It’s that they don’t agree that such property should just be destroyed, simply because it’s your property to do with as you wish. It’s one thing if you take the stuff because you are going to legitimately use it, but if you aren’t, it seems a bit overly jerkish to remove it or destroy it.
It’s more like the shower cap, shoe shine cloth, or decaf coffee packets you aren’t going to use. Do you throw them away, in the interests of “tidying up”, or do you just leave them be for the next guest?
You can feel any way you feel. Those feelings do not entitle you to destroy their materials. I may believe a lot of groups that disagree with my politics or religion lie or spread ignorance. I still do not destroy their materials. Feelings does not make one a “Hater”; actions do.
Now, I’ll admit to some wiggle room. If you saw a stack of Protocols or Holocaust-denial literature or something like that, then I could understand trashing them. Technically, I wouldn’t approve of that, but I wouldn’t get worked up about it.
If I were there, I wouldn’t get them out of the trash, except a copy or two for my collection of extremist literature.
BUT if I saw a stack of American Atheist lit (from the Madalyn Murray O’Hair days), free copies of The Da Vinci Code or Toledoth Yeshu- all three of which I believe lie & spread ignorance- I still wouldn’t trash them. I’d take a few for my collection, maybe laugh a bit, perhaps engage passerby in conversation about them, and let it go.