Taking the Law into your own Hands
My wife passed this on to me, knowing how much I detest censorship and people thinking they get to control what others have access to. I think most will agree with us that this is just reprehensible.
In Nicholasville, KY, a library volunteer, Sharon Cook, is taking a stand. What stand, you might ask? She’s deciding, on her own, what other people ought to have the ability to read. The book in question, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier, which she has functionally stolen from the Jessamine County Public Library because she doesn’t like the idea that children should have access to a book which contains graphic sexual images.
Now there’s a proper way to get objectionable books removed from the library and in fact, to her credit, Ms. Cook did indeed go that route first. When her request was denied, however, she did the next best thing. She checked out the book and never gave it back. She is in possession of stolen property and she doesn’t care one bit. In fact, Cook and a co-worker, Beth Boisvert, were terminated over the situation. It is not a volunteer or a librarian’s job to decide who can and who cannot read a book, whether they like it or not.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t care less, they’ve taken the law into their own hands and decided, by fiat, that they get to decide, at least in the case of this particular book, who should have access and who should not. They might have a case if the book in question violated obscenity laws but it doesn’t. In fact, it was one of the Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2007 and has won many awards, not to mention the series having been made into a Hollywood movie in 2003.
If Ms. Cook and Ms. Boisvert were really that concerned with the whole thing, they could have asked the girl who had put a hold on the book’s parents to sign off on it. If they didn’t care if their daughter read it, then there’s certainly nothing that two ex-librarians should have to say about it.
Okay, so we have a particularly stupid volunteer who should never have been employed at a library to begin with. So why, other than the whole censorship aspect, am I bothering? After all, the library can just get another copy and sue the crap out of Cook and deny her a library card or access to any of their books for life, right? The part that gets me, and I’m sure it’ll get you too. “People prayed over me while I was reading it because I did not want those images in my head,” she says. Yes, she read a book that she apparently didn’t want to read, and thought that having people praying over her while she did it would help her not to remember any of it.
Clearly we’re looking at someone who is entirely unstable. What’s worse, she even knows that what she’s doing is censorship and wrong, but because she’s justifying it as “protecting the children”, she has no problem with it. She says she doesn’t want it restricted from adults, but because she’s personally offended by it, she’s going to decide for all parents everywhere what their children can and cannot read. And Ms. Cook, here’s a newsflash for you, because you’ve absconded with the book, you’re functionally censoring it from adult readers as well.
Both Cook and Boisvert can’t figure out why they were fired from their jobs over this. Oh, maybe the fact that you STOLE something from your employers? Does that make any sense to you?
Here’s my wife’s take on the whole thing.
I’m really getting to hate stupid people.
One Comment to “Taking the Law into your own Hands”
I went to college in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Calling it "conservative" is an understatement; when I was there, evangelical Christians had a lot of power in that county and they exercised it unabashedly. When I was in college (around the time Falwell got his Moral Majority off the ground), several of my professors spoke very openly about how Christian influence should permeate American society – we were being taught a doctrine that was (maybe) just a step or two shy of outright Dominionism/theocracy. I've been out of touch with the college for years, so I can't say whether the profs are still pushing that line. I suspect they are.
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