Banned Books Week? Who is censoring whom?

By: American Decency Staff

Have you ever heard of Banned Books Week? 

This year, Banned Books week is slated for September 21 to 27.

Banned Books week is a week set aside at the beginning of each new school year by the liberal American Library Association (ALA)  to publicly make clear  that expressing  concern about particular library material is a no – no, especially if you are asking that it be removed.

While avidly pushing their agenda:  abortion, any-faith but Christianity, LGBTQ, etc. they hinder the addition of Christian and conservative material.

Who is censoring whom here?  Is it the occasional concerned parent whose complaint is seldom to never honored?  Or is it  the library that inventories radical left material and excludes conservative, Christian material?   

Check out the following  PRO BANNED BOOKS  article from the Detroit Free Press entitled:Birmingham library drawing attention to banned books

…  They've wrapped dozens of challenged books in plain brown paper — oh, it's ever so discreet — and they'll make them available for any adult to check out. Along with the book, each patron will receive "a little bag of Hershey's kisses to enjoy on your date," Bergeron said.

Blind-date books will be chosen from among the nation's most challenged books, including the sexually titillating recent best-seller "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the classic 1950s coming-of-age novel and high-school staple "Catcher in the Rye."

But adults don't have all the fun with challenged books. According to the American Library Association, the single most challenged book of 2013 (and of 2012) was a children's series about fourth graders whose fictional superhero suddenly becomes real. It's the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey, replete with flatulence jokes and bathroom humor.

So, at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, the Baldwin library plans to host a Captain Underpants party for kids, celebrating all challenged children's books. Such books contain words and ideas that some parents can't stand but which most kids love, Library Director Doug Koschik said.

"Intellectual freedom is one of our library's core values," Koschik said. "Only by exchanging and debating a full range of values can people achieve what's best and most useful for them."

Linda Harvey exposed the fraud of the ALA campaign as she wrote:  The Bullies of Banned Book Week:   What would you do if you wanted to expose kids to trash and treason while keeping pesky parents away? You might try something like “Banned Books Week,” a diversionary tactic invented by the leftist American Library Association in league with predictable business interests anxious to market tons of total garbage to children without interference.

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This graphic a  full page article from the Muskegon Chronicle from September 10, 1989.   

As you can see, the picture portrays students with their eyes blindfolded as books lay before them on their school desks.

Note the telling first paragraph.  It shows that that out of over 150 million public school and college students there was a paltry 153 complaints. You do the math on that one.

The percentage of complaints per student calculates to the following:  0.00000102 of the students seeking to remove a book from the library even back in 1986-87.

This past week more than 40 million public school children and 13 million college students returned to their classrooms.  But in the many of these halls of learning, the shadow of censorship hangs over that source of light and knowledge, the library . Seriously?  If this isn’t overreach, I don’t know what is.

The article continues by stating, In the 1986-87 academic year, People for the American Way reported 153 attempts to remove books from public schools or libraries in 41 states, 37 percent of them successful.

I think of a young teen who, while paging through a computer magazine at our local library, came across a full page ad for XXX rated videos.  He told his father who went to the library asking that the ad just simply be removed.  He was told to register a complaint at the front desk.  It was library policy that a form had to be filled out.  The next step that is part and parcel of the American Library Association “Freedom to Read – Freedom to View” agenda is that the complainant has to go before the  "library review board".

The library circles the wagon.  Even other librarians from the area are invited and often attend.  It is intended to be and IS clear-cut intimidation as the person making the complaint is called upon to express their concern and then pubically questioned by a closed- minded review board. 

Linda Harvey  writes in her thoughtful expose of Banned Books Week with these words:

In reality, there’s no “banning” happening, in the sense of government removal of material from circulation. What does happen is that certain library or school material at the local level is sometimes openly questioned by parents. This infuriates liberals, who demand the right to quietly make decisions behind the scenes. They choose books/videos that predictably advocate abortion, any-faith-but-Christianity, homosexuality, anti-Americanism, evolution, neo-paganism, atheism, Marxism, and they reject others.

In other words, they practice censorship. But when a wise leftist does it in the privacy of her office, it’s called “choice.”

Savvy parents will question the underlying premise that there’s a huge problem in America with “book banning.” This non-problem is phony, phony, phony. “Parents, leave us alone!” is the real dilemma for librarians or curriculum committees in schools, who want to prescribe for other people’s children a “freedom to read” any kind of jaw-dropping bilge that exists.
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Banned Books Week?  See it for what it is. a diversionary tactic invented by the leftist American Library Association in league with predictable business interests anxious to market tons of total garbage to children without interference.

For further helpful information including pertinent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, go to safelibraries.

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