"Concerned" parents bully Minnesota library during Banned Book Week.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

Rainbow Rowell should be in the Minneapolis area today, talking about her best-selling, award-winning, highly acclaimed novel for teens, “Eleanor & Park.”

Instead Rowell will be home, in Omaha, presumably writing more heartbreaking words that may or may not get her into trouble.

Rowell is not in Minnesota today because the Anoka County Library pulled its invite. And because the Anoka-Hennepin district, Minnesota's largest public school system, declined to pick up the speaker's fee the library had offered. And because neither responded to Rowell's offer to come for free, which she would have done all along.

Instead, the two public entities bowed to the complaints, generated by a small but vocal group of people called the Parents Action League, which got spooked by the F-word and its various iterations that appear in “Eleanor & Park.”

In a 13-page report, two parents of a 15-year-old student enumerated what they found offensive.

“Never in our 43 years have either of us read anything more profane,” they wrote.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130925/NEWS/130929202/1685





I fully support your right to not allow your children access to what you find offensive. But when you go out of your way to deny that choice to others, you're stepping over the line.

[lpbk2713]

1. They obviously haven't read much in 43 years.

OMFG

[kentauros]

2. I bet they'd be shocked to death if they ever read any of the books

their grandparents were likely required to read

[Posteritatis]

4. I have trouble believing that anyone who calls for book bans is a regular reader. (nt)

[LondonReign2]

3. "They counted 227 offending words, including 67 Gods, 24 Jesuses and 4 Christs."

Well there you go.

[Brigid]

11. Am I to understand . . .

That these people actually spend their time counting naughty words in books? May I suggest they take up macrame?

[LondonReign2]

13. Search function on the Kindle

probably makes them much more efficient in their nuttery

[SheilaT]

14. Does anyone here have the Bible on Kindle or

any other ebook? Let's count the number of "God" and "Jesus" and "Christ" in there and be offended.

Now THAT'S a book that deserves banning, if you ask me. Okay, so you didn't ask, but I'm volunteering my opinion anyway.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

5. They caved to an anti gay hate group.

Parents Action League (PAL) is a citizens organization started in 2010 to oppose changes in the Anoka-Hennepin (Minnesota) School District 11 policy which limited discussions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues in district classrooms.[3][4] PAL's roots go back as far as 1994, when one of its most-vocal members, Barb Anderson, successfully influenced the school district's board to exclude homosexuality from its sex-ed curriculum.[1]
The school district abandoned the 2010 policy following several student suicides, lawsuits and investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated Parents Action League as an anti-gay hate group[5] for "damaging propaganda about the gay community".

[UtahLib]

6. Sad

I find it disturbing that they have been allowed the power to keep everyone just as ignorant and bigoted as they are.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

7. Part of this lies in the sixth congressional district....

....and you know what asshole rules there....

[ForgoTheConsequence]

8. Holy shit, those eyes.

The look of evil.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

9. I'm sure the parents in question love her

Hypnotized by the eyes and the rabid stupidity.

[Aerows]

10. Not that lunatic again

Good grief. That woman would ban everything but the Bible and a Constitution, both revised to support what she thinks they say.

To quote a poster I read a few days ago: "She's nuttier than squirrel doo-doo."

[Skidmore]

12. Wonder if these parents ever eavesdrop on uncensored

conversations of their precious teens or preteens. Some of the words used by the average fourth grader on the playground would send them into heart failure methinks.

[SheilaT]

15. And some of the music they listen to.

Holy profanity, Batman! I had a lot of trouble getting my younger son to understand that I myself did not want to listen to songs containing various words and sentiments that I found offensive. He was in high school, and while I told him many times that I'd prefer he didn't listen to that stuff, I mainly put my foot down about what he could play in the car.

[gopiscrap]

16. bunch of morons