“Could it be Satan?!”
“I think the anti-Christian bias — it’s just got to stop.”
The next challenge Harry Potter will face has nothing to do with horcruxes, Hogwart’s or the half-blood prince. Instead, it will be a group of concerned parents looking to take the series off the shelves of all Gwinnett County Public Schools.
Laura Mallory of Loganville filed an appeal last week to get the best-selling book series out of the schools’ media centers.
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.”
Jessica Grimes, a 10-year-old student at Duncan Creek Elementary School, faxed a letter to the school system in support of the books series.
“The books never at any time turned me into a wizard or witch,” Grimes said. “I go to church every Sunday, go to Sunday school and never at any time did I think the books are true.”
[Mallory] admitted that she has not read the book series partially because “they’re really very long and I have four kids.”
“I’ve put a lot of work into what I’ve studied and read. I think it would be hypocritical for me to read all the books, honestly. I don’t agree with what’s in them.”
Real-Life Church Lady Laura Mallory
Related Link:
Harry Potter Author JK Rowling Makes “Major” Cash Donation To Help Set Up a Multiple Sclerosis Research Centre in Edinburgh.
Isn’t the bible filled with refferences to things like witchcraft, demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, spells, raising people from the dead, etc etc etc?
What is it with these christian nutjobs? I help maintain the computer network in a christian centre and bookshop and they have a petition running to ban ‘potter’ books from the local schools too.
Every time I’m there I carefully remove and bin a page or two of signitures 🙂
#31–Hahahahaa!!! You ROCK! The His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman is the first stop for Potter fans when they run out of Harry to read. It’s a marvelous series, but more appropriate for older kids. Another good read for Harry fans is Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising Sequence. It’s fine for kids who are a tad too young for His Dark Materials. All excellent books, by the way. As much as I love Harry, Pullman’s and Cooper’s quality of writing is much better. Another thing for Potter fans to try is Jan Siegel’s Propero’s Children series and her new series which begins with The Greenstone Grail and is written under her real name Amanda Hemingway. They’re intended for adults & not quite as well written as the Clark and Pullman books, but are entertaining & satisfying reads for teens as well. Take that, censorship!
33, Every time I’m there I carefully remove and bin a page or two of signatures
Then you shouldn’t sign your real name if that is what you do do. Maybe you could sign with a choir leader’s name.
33. re the Bible. quite so. what kind of “protagonist” would order a follower to murder his own son, just to prove his love. or subject another follower to a series of sadistic trials to prove a similar point?
and lets not even get into the murder, genocide, incest and genital mutilation …. there is some wrath that makes Grand Theft Auto look like, well, choir practice by comparison …
She hasn’t read them because “they’re long?” Good Lord. I have four children, too, and I managed to finish them all.
She does look so much better with the stained glass window glowing behind her. It gives her, that je ne sais quois, sexy look.
I live in Loganville. Very southern Baptist conservative town. Doesn’t surprise me a bit she lives here.
Dear Wizard (post #26),
Sorry to disagrre with you here – I was pleasantly surprised at how well written they were, especially considering the audience. I am concerned that your biggest beef is the “questioning of authority”, the stories would be rather boring if Harry just wandered around the books always doing what he was told.
Remember, Harry does pay the price sometimes for his rebellious nature, teaching you must accept responsibilty for your actions. That is a far better message than “always listen to authorities”.
I too live in Loganville – which I must point out doesn’t actually have a bookstore. A town where the concept of walking into a restaurant and ordering a mixed drink goes on the ballot every couple of years and winds up being defeated because apparently drinking Grey Goose martinis will lead the citizens to reading and reading leads to thinking and thinking leads to the Dark Side.
Someone else wrote: “So she hates the stories but hasn’t even read one of them. She has read what others have written about them, gee I wonder what her sources were. Maybe her sources were a little biased. Just maybe her sources have a political agenda. Naw, couldn’t be.”
My reply: Do you think that people like that actually READ so that they can make informed decisions? Independant thought is like Kryptonite to creatures like this… her head would implode if she pulled it out from up her ass long enough to come up with anything remotely resembling an original thought or an opinion that wasn’t given to her by her Pastor. It is moments like this when I find myself wanting to take up torches and pitchforks.
I suspect Mrs. Mallory would secretly like to chair the dunking stool committee at her local evangelical church fronting for the neighborhood right-wing political action office. Since she can’t actually find any Witches to harass in her area, she naturally has to sublimate that aggression into something else. If it wasn’t Harry Potter, it would be the Proctor & Gamble logo or satanic messages recorded backwards in some Drudaic tongue on an Enya CD.
These kind of folks need something on which to focus their guilt. It’s not easy ignoring the message of compassion and tolerance in the Bible in exchange for cherry picking out of context sound bites that can be used to belittle anyone different from yourself.
Maybe it’s good that she is focused on Harry Potter books, if it keeps her nose out of more serious matters. That’s not to say censorship isn’t bad. But books are the domain of librarians, and librarians are the Knights Templar of free speech. Librarians are a crafty and formidable foe. They got that way by being often silent and reading, instead of burning, a lot of books. My grandfather told me a story about a librarian from his hometown who could use bookmarks like Ninja throwing stars. She often ran noisy gangs of drunken cowboys out of town with nothing more than a finger over her lips making a shushing sound and a handful of bookmarks. So I think the books are safe.
I did her.
#43
Well – where are your details?
Loganville is right next to Atlanta. I didn’t know dry counties and towns were so close to civilization.
Details? C’mon we’re in the video era.
Yeah, she is hot. Maybe someone should email her a link to this blog topic and then put it to the top when she replies, especially to the Rev.
Maybe someone should email her a link to this blog topic and then put it to the top when she replies, especially to the Rev.
No go. The summary would be too long for her to read.
I love these ignorant ultra christian whackjobs.
They make me feel like Newton.
I have to give a “church lady” credit for some of my life-long reading habits.
We had a fundamentalist Christian lady get on our school board and she successfully banned several books including Grapes of Wrath.
I checked it out quick-like before it came off the shelf and read it. It was one of the first quality books I ever read on my own initiative and I really like it. Since then I’ve read nearly all of Steinbeck’s books, some repeatedly.
“I think it would be hypocritical for me to read all the books, honestly. I don’t agree with what’s in them.”
That has to be the single stupidest thing I’ve heard all week. And I hear a lot of stupid things.
So…It’s hypocritical for her to read Harry Potter because she does not agree with the content..Yet I’m sure she would say that everyone should read her favorite book – “The Bible” – especially if they do not agree with the content and views held within/are not Christian. How does that make any sense? (obviously it doesn’t) This type of situation caused book bannings and burnings back a few decades, and close-minded people are the ones who began it all. What a surprise…