# 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:** 33
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/643 "2021-03-10T22:34:08Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > It’s never been about equality or so-called ‘equity.’ It’s always been about power. That’s why the intrinsic logical within the woke left can’t be solved. They can only be obfuscated by linguistic shenanigans that would make Humpty Dumpty blush, **cancel culture,** and violence. - [https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/07/opinions/gop-cancel-culture-obeidallah/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/07/opinions/gop-cancel-culture-obeidallah/index.html) > **[How the GOP Fell in Love With Cancel Culture](https://newrepublic.com/article/160937/gop-fell-love-cancel-culture)** > > A concept popularized by online media has fully migrated to the Republican fever swamps. > **[Trump decries 'cancel culture,' but does he participate in it? He's called...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/03/trump-decries-cancel-culture-but-he-has-participated/3451223001/)** > > A non-exhaustive list of people and things President Donald Trump has tried to "cancel," as he now decries "cancel culture." ---
**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, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/644 "2021-03-10T22:36:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > ‘Equity’ is about outcome, not whether the playing field is fair. Well, admissions officers and hiring managers and other people who control the selection of members in any particular institutions can’t make playing fields fair. They can’t take over kindergartens and remove all racist and sexist barriers to equal education and then sit back and wait seventeen years to get their applicant pool. To pursue goals like diversity and representation and affirmative action, they have to work with the tools they’ve actually got. Saying “equality requires us to pretend that the playing field is fair, when it actually isn’t, so we can pretend there’s no bias in our selection procedures” is just lazily perpetuating existing unfairness. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Should there be preferential hiring for men in psychology until we are at 50/50? How about nursing? Or teaching? All heavily female dominated. And consequently the nursing and teaching professions, for example, are busting their butts trying to recruit more male applicants and reduce the cultural stigma of “effeminacy” attaching to such professions. Do you seriously think that the gender imbalance among nurses and teachers isn’t perceived as a serious problem in those professions? > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Women now make up about 63% of college students, and men only 37%. That sounds like a huge disparate outcome to me. ‘Equity’ calls for women to be penalized until we’re back to 50/50, right? You think that sounds ridiculous or unlikely? That’s already happening throughout US higher education. Google “affirmative action for men in college admissions” and you’ll see that yes, the higher proportion of female applicants means that male applicants to colleges that want to have a gender-balanced student body have a significant advantage. That’s how diversity works: if your institution values having a broadly balanced population that resembles the makeup of the general population more than a narrow slice of it, then members of underrepresented groups are going to be statistically advantaged in seeking to participate. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I think we know the answer. The people who claim to believe in ‘equity’ mean only equity for their preferred groups. You clearly know nothing about attitudes towards diversity and representation in the professions and institutions you’re talking about, because the answer that you “think we know” is flat-out wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/645 "2021-03-10T22:36:54Z")
Hi, octupus, I see you’re back. Care to address my post 626 above? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/646 "2021-03-10T22:39:56Z")
Roll a persuasion check. ---
**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, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/647 "2021-03-10T22:43:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > or race hustlers like Beverly De’Angeles, who never saw an interaction between people of different races she couldn’t make a buck off by declaring racism ? Does anybody have a clue about whom Sam thinks he’s referring to here? My Google attempts on this name have been coming up with American Lampoon Vacation films actress Beverly D’Angelo, and a bunch of LinkedIn listings for various variants on “Beverley DeAngelis”. None of whom seems like a plausible candidate for the above description even in a context as detached from reality as a Sam\_Stone rant. ---
**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, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/648 "2021-03-10T23:41:55Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And this despite the fact that Asians are heavily under-represented in the Ivy Leagues. ? Okay, maybe it’s futile even to attempt to make logical sense out of a Sam\_Stone rant, but here’s another chunk of straight-up incoherence that’s not providing any clue even to what Sam thought he meant by it. “Asians under-represented in the Ivy League”? By what metric? Certainly not in terms of the representation of Asian-Americans in the US population. All Americans of Asian descent, including East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian ethnicities, make up something like 6% of the total US population. Asian-American Ivy League college students, on the other hand, constitute somewhere between 20%-25% of the Ivy League student body. In other words, the statistical facts are that Asian-American college students, due to their high average levels of academic achievement, are massively overrepresented in Ivy League institutions. Where on earth did Sam\_Stone get his claim that they’re “under-represented”? You know, it really is depressing watching the level of conservative political discourse deteriorate like this. Maybe I’ve just got the nostalgia, but it seems to me that a decade or so ago it was much more common to find conservatives at least trying to make honest and rational arguments for their ideology. A lot of them still seemed to value knowing the facts and reasoning coherently. Nowadays, more and more, all they’ve got is resentment politics and flat-out delusions about matters of verifiable fact. This can’t be just the effect of individual posters getting old and confused, because that’s happening to all of us at the same rate no matter where we are on the political spectrum. This has to represent severe degradation in the conservative media sources that they’re taking their arguments from. Conservative media no longer need to persuade their target audiences by making persuasive fact-based arguments: they can get just as much conservative allegiance and support by throwing together a half-assed hodgepodge of lies, misinterpretations, anger and bullshit. They don’t even have to proofread the stuff for obvious glaring misstatements any more: just leave the obvious glaring misstatements in, and conservative audiences won’t even notice them, because the only message they’re paying attention to is basically just “LIBERALS BAD”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/649 "2021-03-10T23:47:37Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Does anybody have a clue about whom Sam thinks he’s referring to here? Robin DiAngelo. ---
**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, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/650 "2021-03-10T23:56:11Z")
Aha, thanks TOWP. At least Robin DiAngelo actually is a writer and speaker on race relations, unlike the still-mysterious “Beverly De’Angeles”. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/651 "2021-03-11T00:20:58Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > I use these threads as an opportunity to hone my arguments for possible use in future debates with people arguing in good faith. I am under no illusion that this thread is such a debate. I should clarify that calling out liars on their lies, as I did with octopus, is worthwhile, indeed mandatory. It’s the life-draining futility of correcting trolls who repeat their lying assertions dozens of times that kills threads. ---
**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 11, 2021, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/652 "2021-03-11T00:48:14Z")
You did no such thing Delusional Orc. I’ll conjure some green eggs and ham if it will keep you tranquil. ---
**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:** [March 11, 2021, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/653 "2021-03-11T00:50:12Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Aha, thanks TOWP. At least Robin DiAngelo actually is a writer and speaker on race relations, unlike the still-mysterious “Beverly De’Angeles”. I thought he was referring to Mrs. Clark Griswold. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/654 "2021-03-11T01:08:42Z")
At least we’re finally getting the sex / race realism thread our conservative posters have been itching to turn every other thread into. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/655 "2021-03-11T01:22:14Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > ETA: Oh, I guess the “B” button now puts asterixes instead of actually, like, bolding the quote. Can we all agree that Discourse blows? That’s how you make things bold using Markdown, which is the main language of Discourse posts. If I type ` **Thing.Fish** `, I get **Thing.Fish**. Reddit uses the same format. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/656 "2021-03-11T01:22:59Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > I thought he was referring to Mrs. Clark Griswold. I am not willing to entertain the hypothesis that even Sam\_Stone considers the National Lampoon’s Vacation films to be liberal anti-racism propaganda cunningly disguised as doofy mass-market slapstick road comedy. Conservative discourse may have drastically degenerated but by golly it can’t have degenerated that far. (I think.) ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/657 "2021-03-11T01:31:54Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > This is the Pit. So civil isn’t a necessity. Outside of the Pit check out the unremarked upon and constant hyperbolic broad brush characterizations of those right of Stalin in any of several thousand political, debate, etc. threads. I never mentioned “civil”. I mentioned someone posting a few op-eds and thinking that all liberals think that way and considering that an “argument” ---
**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 11, 2021, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/658 "2021-03-11T01:55:07Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > You did no such thing Delusional Orc. > > I’ll conjure some green eggs and ham if it will keep you tranquil. Ah yes, reading Green Eggs and Ham is what Republicans think is important rather than governing. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/5UirhqmmXlI/maxresdefault.jpg "No Republicans Voted for Biden's $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill: A Closer Look") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UirhqmmXlI) ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/659 "2021-03-11T02:21:50Z")
Words can heal and words can hurt. Fortunately up here in Kanukistan we have a balance between _freedom to_ and _freedom from_ where limits are put on transphobic shit-stains like DeamonTree. Public incitement of hatred - **319** (1) Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of - (a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or - (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction. - Marginal note:Wilful promotion of hatred(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of - (a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or - (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction. - Marginal note:Defences(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2) - (a) if he establishes that the statements communicated were true; - (b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text; - (c ) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or - (d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada. > **[Criminal Code](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html)** > > Federal laws of Canada ---
**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 11, 2021, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/660 "2021-03-11T02:37:10Z")
Well, marginal defenses a,b, and c give lot of leeway. Especially b. Defense a is trickier as words are being redefined into absurdity. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/661 "2021-03-11T06:30:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Colorblindness itself is a form of ‘whiteness’ Well, it is a form of pig-headed ignorance and willful blindness to obvious societal problems, so that tracks. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271/662 "2021-03-11T08:48:52Z")
Yeah, I usually come out of [www.OANN.com](http://www.OANN.com) feeling only slightly cleaner than if I spy on stormfront or chimpout. Those are legit white supremacist sites. I won’t give them the dignity of a link to them. I always feel extremely dirty after visiting one of those sites, so I rarely do, unless I get a wild hair. I haven’t visited either in several years. My fiancée is black, and the thought of applying those posts and emotions to be about her is more than I can normally fathom. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-christian-bookstores-allowed-to-ban-books/937271.md?page=34)