What is Your Favorite Banned Book

The American Library Association keeps tabs on which books most frequently experience requests or orders to be banned from school or public libraries. Topics popular for banning change as Christianity changes. Currently, the most popular reason to request banning a book is the topic of homosexual relationships or transgendered characters. "Satan" is at work in those books.

When this blog was available from the Fargo Forum website there were requests made to the Forum to have it taken down. Even now I get scolded occasionally for posting it here on a site few people can find. 

A member of the local atheist group grew up in a fundamentalist church and was lectured on what books available at that time should be banned and even the topic of burning them was discussed. Evil was in those books. When she was older she became an atheists but the titles of those evil books stayed with her. Her hobby for many years has been to haunt used book stores finding and buying the titles she remembers from her childhood. She has quite a fine collection.

My friend, Rev. Howard Bess, wrote a book years ago about gay people in the churches where he had ministered. It was called, "Pastor, I'm Gay." It was quite widely read. The Mayor of Wasilla, AK, a small city very near to him, went to her city library to ask the procedure for having a book taken off the shelves. He is certain she wanted his book removed. Her name is Sarah Palin. 

Popular among those for ban requests are the Harry Potter series. I can't imagine what is wrong with them but conservative Christians have a cow over the content.

Before the civil rights period, a popular choice for the ban was "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I read that recently and was pleased with how skillfully black people were portrayed as smart and enterprising and how their white owner were portrayed as less intelligent. Mark Twain did something similar in "Huckleberry Finn." It too was on ban lists.

Maybe I will join my atheist friend and began collecting books banned by Christian stuffed shirts.








Comments

  1. little helperAugust 23, 2020 at 9:15 AM

    actually, I have two shelves of non-anti Christian material. both 71/2 feet long, and I have studied them in depth. What your link contains is not surprising.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tsmAugust 23, 2020 at 10:28 AM

    how's about Mein Kampf?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. little helperAugust 23, 2020 at 12:39 PM

      Prophetic.

      Delete
    2. little helperAugust 23, 2020 at 8:03 PM

      Unknown; to answer another probable element of your question; "How about"; My copy is c 1927-1925-1943 20th printing.

      Delete

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