# Why are Christian Bookstores Allowed to Ban Books? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 5, 2021, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271 "2021-03-05T15:24:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 29
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/563 "2021-03-10T02:44:24Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > s it Democrats that are actively suppressing the black vote in Georgia right now? One person’s ‘suppressing the black vote’ is another’s ‘ensuring the election can’t be rigged’. Democrats always claim that any attempt to remove dead people from voting rolls or requiring ID or not allowing ballots to trickle in three days after an election is somehow racist. Canada must be a country full of racists then, because we clean our voter databases and require ID for voting and don’t allow crazy mail-in ballots that can be accepted without postmark or three days after an election. And vote harvesting isn’t a thing here. > [@Miller](#): > > Do the Democrats have homophobia written directly into their party platform? Did Democrats just ban abortion in Arkansas? Homophobia is written into the Republican platform? I wasn’t aware of that. Which part? As for abortion, can you understand that people can believe in the sanctity of life in the womb without being misogynists? Or were my mother and grandmother self-hating misogynists? By the way, thirty percent of Democrats disagree with their own party on abortion. How can you tolerate such a large percentage of misogynists in your own party? Or are their reasons more understandable than those of Republicans? Related question: Is it possible to be a practicing Catholic and not be evil? Because unless it changed recently, the Catholic chirch does not support abortion. Oh, and thirty percent of Republicans diagree with their party on abortion. If I were a Republican I’d be one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/564 "2021-03-10T02:48:33Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > One person’s ‘suppressing the black vote’ is another’s ‘ensuring the election can’t be rigged’. One person’s knife is another person’s spoon…but one of them is either mistaken, or lying. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/565 "2021-03-10T02:55:25Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > The irony here is that you ignore all that to whinge about affirmative action, and then pretend that white fragility isn’t a thing. I wasn’t whinging about Affirmative Action, I was marvelling at the chutzpah of someone calling out Republicans for not being colorblind when they support a party that is workjng hard to separate everyone by race and gender and create special protected categories of people based on how much melanin is in their skin. Here’s a tip: if you draw conclusions about _anyone_ based on the color of their skin (ie calljng me fragile because I am white), then you may be a racist. If you find yourself thinking about other people in terms of their skin color or membership in various groups denoted by immutable characteristics of any sort, you need to do some hard thinking about your own tolerance and tendency to pigeonhole people based on things that actually say nothing about their individual characters. And if you think white people are born with original sin and have to atone in some way through ‘antiracism’ or ‘allyship’, then maybe your beliefs are startjng to turn into a religion. Original sin is so useful, because it doesn’t allow people to escape blame by, you know, having done nothing wrong. It’s long been a useful tool of tyrants and priests. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/566 "2021-03-10T02:55:40Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Lol. I doubt you understand 1/2 the words you write. Funny thing that others\*\* I confronted before (ESL guy here) did go for the Grammar Nazi act. For a moment I thought they had a point (I have grammar issues, but just a bit, because their bullshit act was apparent when they **also** rejected big cites from people that had English as a first language), but you constantly demonstrate that claiming that others are not clear (and to @Exapno_Mapcase that is involved in writing no less) just makes you [look like the mollusk shithead](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/50774/does-the-octopus-have-an-anus-what-does-it-look-like) you are in real life. . . . \*\* Others that were banned too BTW ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/567 "2021-03-10T02:56:54Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The condescension and rightous sniffing aginst anyone on the right on this board makes it a hostile environment for anyone who doesn’t join in the amen chorus. Meh, not really. This has always been a majority-liberal board, and it has always had a high percentage of liberals being aggressively condemnatory and/or condescending about various anathemas of right-wing behavior. A hell of a lot of vitriol has been dumped on these boards in the past about, e.g., the Iraq War and Bush Administration economics and conservative climate science denialism and a mass of other right-wingery. Conservative Dopers of the period gleefully wallowed in that “hostile environment” because they thought they had arguments worth making. The main difference between then and now is not that liberalism has been getting more censorious, but that conservatism have been getting less and less defensible. Conservative Dopers used to find it easier to believe that they had a cause worth fighting for, in the form of pea-knacky “democracy promotion”, Gingrichian “small government” ideology, market fundamentalism, complaints about “liberal media”, “climate skepticism”, and a host of other positions that still had some amount of mainstream intellectual respectability even if liberals in general despised them. Now, though, in the Age of Trump… with conservative media largely mired in “alternative facts” and straight-up disinformation propaganda, with the Republican Party committed to a platformless program of sheer obstructionism and roiled with internal convulsions about Trumpism, with the conservative movement ever more entangled with low-information zany conspiracy theories and outright white supremacism, with conservative “freedoms” ideology horrendously stained by its childish rebellions against sensible public-health precautions in the midst of a pandemic and the consequent hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, with conservative economics producing ever more economic inequality along with insecurity, stagnation and “despair epidemics” among the non-wealthy, with “climate skepticism” dead as the passenger pigeon, with conservative ideals of governance reduced to the openly transactional buffoonery of a semi-literate reality-TV conman, with the US’s “democracy promotion” wars leaving an ongoing shambles that voters turn away from in disgust, with Republican anti-democracy policies of voter suppression and minoritarian power coming further and further out of the shadows up to and including an actual insurrection attempt in order to block or disrupt a peaceful transfer of power… …well, non-insane conservatives are finding less and less about their movement’s current historical moment that can plausibly be defended against liberal vitriol. It’s still possible around here to have the occasional rational argument with reasonable intelligent conservatives about some specific political issue on which reasonable people can disagree. But when it comes to standing up for “the right” as an overall political philosophy, conservative Dopers these days are mostly reduced to sullen silence or skulking around whining about how hateful and mean the libs are being to them and help help they’re being repressed. It’s not that liberals have actually become nastier or more aggressive. It’s that conservatives in general have become more openly, obviously contemptible. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/568 "2021-03-10T03:05:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I wasn’t whinging about Affirmative Action, I was marvelling at the chutzpah of someone calling out Republicans for not being colorblind when they support a party that is workjng hard to separate everyone by race and gender and create special protected categories of people based on how much melanin is in their skin. If you had bothered to check the cite I made, it linked to an item that showed that race-neutral policies have proved not to [lead to](https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/affirmative-action-mismatch-and-economic-mobility-after-california%E2%80%99s-proposition-209) [racial equity](https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/UH4YSS3QHRCBY2VJEKPT/full). That is what Republicans and conservatives have been doing, if totally racist policies are not possible now, they do go for the least helpful measures to deal with that issue, they do great jobs with the titles they assign to their solutions, I can grant that. ---
**Author:** ![DeadTreasSecretaries](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deadtreassecretaries/32/4817_2.png) [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/569 "2021-03-10T03:07:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > not allowing ballots to trickle in three days after an election Wait you bought into that shit too? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/570 "2021-03-10T03:10:58Z")
> [@DeadTreasSecretaries](#): > > Wait you bought into that shit too? He didn’t buy into that shit. He is _selling_ that shit. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/571 "2021-03-10T03:12:46Z")
If the left haven’t become more censorious and illiberal we wouldn’t have such open letters and opinion pieces. > **[A Letter on Justice and Open Debate | Harper's Magazine](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/)** > > July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social... > **[Will American Ideas Tear France Apart? Some of Its Leaders Think So...](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html)** > > Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a threat to French identity and the French republic. > **[Opinion | Dawn of the Woke](https://www.wsj.com/articles/dawn-of-the-woke-11596385455)** > > Joe McCarthy was a B-movie monster. Today’s cancel culture is more like a zombie apocalypse. These aren’t just the imaginary ramblings of a few nuts on a message board. You can also re-watch film of the riots this summer and fall to see how violent the left can be. Burning state and private property and looting to the tune of 100s of millions of dollars is sort of nasty and aggressive by normal definitions of the words. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/572 "2021-03-10T03:13:50Z")
Equity? And what the hell is that? Equality of outcome? You think that that is actually possible across all demographics? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/573 "2021-03-10T03:14:11Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > One person’s ‘suppressing the black vote’ is another’s ‘ensuring the election can’t be rigged’. How does passing a law against handing out water to people waiting to vote prevent election rigging? How does cutting polling stations in majority black neighborhoods prevent election rigging? > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Homophobia is written into the Republican platform? I wasn’t aware of that. Which part? “Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman … We do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal.” -GOP Platform, 2020. [More here.](https://democrats.org/news/republicans-re-endorse-unpopular-anti-lgbtq-platform/) You were, of course, completely aware of this. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Or were my mother and grandmother self-hating misogynists? I didn’t know them, but if they’re responsible for how you turned out, it doesn’t speak well of them. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/574 "2021-03-10T03:14:56Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > These aren’t just the imaginary ramblings of a few nuts on a message board. You lost it when the nuts at the WSJ are cited. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/575 "2021-03-10T03:16:10Z")
Lol! Now the WSJ is not on the approved list. That list is getting shorter and shorter each year. Much like the vocabulary of newspeak. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/576 "2021-03-10T03:17:20Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Equity? And what the hell is that? Equality of outcome? You think that that is actually possible across all demographics? Well thanks for showing all once again that you do not bother to follow links and cites. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/577 "2021-03-10T03:25:08Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Lol! Now the WSJ is not on the approved list. That list is getting shorter and shorter each year. Much like the vocabulary of newspeak. And this shows that you never paid any attention with many past discussions where the opinions from the WSJ were found to be stupid before. The WSJ opinion pages have been truly a cesspool of stupidity for decades now. > **[Believing ‘Wall Street Journal’ Op-Eds Can Be Deadly](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/wall-street-journal-opinion-conspiracies/)** > > The newspaper’s own reporters are challenging the Trumpian opinion section. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/578 "2021-03-10T03:27:01Z")
Perhaps we can have a sticky of hive approved sources? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/579 "2021-03-10T03:27:07Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > If the left haven’t become more censorious and illiberal we wouldn’t have such open letters and opinion pieces. Piffle. The media and conservative handwringers have been churning out exactly the same sort of open letters and opinion pieces about the dangers of liberal “political correctness” for the past thirty years and more. [LETTERS: PC IS LIBERAL THOUGHT CONTROL [1998]](https://www.semissourian.com/story/2806958.html) [Has political correctness gone mad? [2002]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/1988952.stm) [Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of “Political Correctness” and Related Phenomena […] Political correctness is an important theme in the raging “culture war” […] [1994] ](https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Glenn_Loury/louryhomepage/papers/Loury%20(Politcal%20Correctness).pdf) The right wing is always claiming that the “left” has just recently embarked on an alarming unprecedentedly dangerous course of “political correctness”/“culture war”/“SJW”/“wokeness” behavior, relying on its audiences’ short memories to ignore all the previous times it said exactly the same thing about exactly the same type of behavior. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/580 "2021-03-10T03:28:15Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Perhaps we can have a sticky of hive approved sources? Uh… too late mollusk, you are what you read… ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/581 "2021-03-10T03:36:35Z")
**Sam** , you impossible dipshit, I didn’t call you fragile because you’re white, I called you fragile because you whine like a kicked dog, and you specifically whine like a kicked dog whenever anyone brings up the issue of how absolutely shitty the right is to racial minorities. I’m not judging you because you’re white (surprise twist: so am I!) I’m judging you because you marshal awful arguments in defense of reprehensible political movements. I do have to say, though, I appreciate the speed with which you went from, “My mom was against abortion, how could she possibly be misogynist?” to “You’re racist against other white people”. I know consistency isn’t a conservative virtue, but that’s some remarkable doublespeak there. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/582 "2021-03-10T03:38:31Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You mean like calling people racists and sexists and transphobes when in reality they just have a different set of political beliefs? Because that happens here _all the time_ . as well as calling Republicans in general evil, belonging to an evil party. Point taken. This board is no friend to Republicans, to be sure. But there is a lot of terrifying reprehensible shit happening in the Republican party, and anyone who attempts to miminize that is probably going to catch some shit for it. And people who express bigotry should be identified for what they are doing. If a thought or belief is racist, it should be identified as such. In general, though, I don’t particularly like the overgeneralizing. Certain individuals in the legislature deserve all the invective that gets thrown at them, and we can talk about disturbing trends in the Republican party, but I don’t believe all Republican voters are evil. I don’t understand how they can enable evil, but I respect that they don’t see it that way and for many of them it’s not coming from a place of ill intent. I have a cousin who is one of the nicest guys I know who loves Trump and it’s absolutely baffling but clearly he is not evil. One thing I said to him recently, when we got into a disagreement, is that right now it’s more important than ever that we see each other as human beings first. It’s easy to lose sight of that on a message board. But not everybody who posts here is a left - wing extremist. In fact I’d wager not many of us are. The problem is that the Republican party has taken a hard turn to the autocratic right. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > People who worry about censorship should be very concerned about a company’s ability to wipe out copies of books they have already sold. Personally Amazon’s content control scares the shit out of me. I’m a romance writer and anyone in the field can tell you that certain keywords or phrases in your blurb can get your book deep-sixed to the erotica category which makes marketing extremely difficult. Now you can’t even put content warnings on your book without it being fucked with in sales. That means if I write a book that deals heavily with sexual assault, and I warn the reader in the description, I’m putting my own sales at risk. Their decisions are completely arbitrary and impossible to predict. It’s not a new problem and it’s certainly not a conservative-specific problem. > [@octopus](#): > > What a fascinatingly ironic perspective. I seem to recall several attacks on my motives in the pit, in ATMB, and elsewhere on these forums in far more vicious language and intent than I use and never any push back on it. I wonder if you or these other victims of mean ol’ octopus would post on a site that was as one-sided as this but was ideologically opposed. Hell no. I hate conflict and would be far more sensitive to that level of invective than you seem to be. But if for some reason I did post in a place where I was an ideological minority, I think I’d be extra careful to seem as reasonable and good faith as humanly possible. I think you’re confusing the effect with the cause. Actually I have been in this position on this board. For other things. I didn’t get a lot of insults because I kept my wits about me and posted like a reasonable human being despite my at times frothing rage. You honestly have no idea what I’ve put myself through for the causes I believe in. It really depends on whether it’s more important to be heard and make a change or to vent your spleen. > [@octopus](#): > > Of course labeling me a Nazi, a racist, a homophobe, whatever the insult of the day is merely because I am pro liberty is unworthy of note or complaint. You keep saying you are pro-liberty but your posts indicate you are pro whatever pisses off the left. I’ve never once seen you champion the rights of millions of voters who were very nearly disenfranchized, or the right of people of color to not have the criminal justice system unjustly deprive them of their liberty and their lives. You are far more worried about Dr. Seuss and I will never understand that. > [@Monty](#): > > Seriously, folks, why do you insist on trying to communicate with him? I like octopuses a lot. My husband says I’m positively biased toward the user name and need to let it go. I think I just see glimpses of humanity in certain people and keep trying to bring it out. I did the same with **Starving Artist.** Some people say ridiculous things but you can usually bring them around with a little patience. I’m losing my patience though. This whole thing is just sad and probably beyond repair. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271.md?page=28) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271.md?page=30)