A local church is urging its members to permanently remove books from the Shelby County Public Library by checking them out and never returning them. The books portray gay characters and historical figures or explore LGBTQ+ themes.
Pamela Wilson Federspiel, who has been director of the library in downtown Shelbyville for 34 years, says the action is tantamount to “stealing.”
But three leaders of the Reformation Church of Shelbyville defend what they call an “act of civil disobedience.”
The religious… Always willing to break the law
Typical Shelbyville.
This is what inbred cousin marriage does to a town.
Stealing from a library should be a deadly sin like kicking a puppy or pineapple on a pizza.
That’s theft. There’s nothing CIVIL about trying to erase the presence of a particular group of people from society …
Theft, plain and simple. The only hope is that they actually read those books and learn something.
Maybe the library should raise and enforce their late-return-fees…
It’s also a criminal conspiracy.
We can only hope the judge sees it as such, too.
Civil disobedience and “petty crime” aren’t mutually exclusive. It is integral to civil disobedience that laws are broken. Also there is probably a difficulty and lots of legal debate about when violating a civil contract, borrowing an item for a specified time, becomes theft of the item by not returning it.
I think non of these should be the question here though. It is simply a dick move.
If it’s religious, yeah, it’s theft. These assholes happily break every commandments they have “in the name of Christ”
Why is it always always the religious that really truly fuck everyone else over?
I’m at the point where if someone claims to be religious that I’m just assuming they’ll rape their children because chances are big that they do.
It takes religion to make a good man do terrible deeds.
Mankind will never be free until the last politician is strangled with the robes of the last priest
Mankind will never be free until the last politician is strangled with the
robesentrails of the last priest
The way to fight this is easy. Offer to buy new library copies. Eventually they’ll run out of people without overdue books.
Burning or disposing of the books will also generate bad press because it associates them with their kindred spirits: Nazis and church censors.
Civil disobedience often comes with the cost of breaking the law and enduring the consequences.
You may not agree with their non violent protest but as long as they suffer the consequences, I’m okay with it.
Just tell me where to donate to replace the books so they can accrue more punishment.
These dumbfucks need real hobbies.
Too many people don’t have a life. I keep getting stalked by a neighbor because I smoke weed when I walk the dog at night. I got the weed 5 minutes away from home at a new dispensary… they don’t have a personality besides oppressing others.
Hope they enjoy their item replacement fees and collection agency reports, and not being able to use the library at all 'til all of that is resolved (no matter how much a fit they throw when they can’t use the printers.) They’ll still pay for the material with their taxes. They’re paying for public unbiased access to information either way. We’ll serve LGBTQIA+ books the same way we serve faith books the same way we serve Bill O’Reilly’s slop and tomes of questionable fad diets and endless ghostwritten hackjob murder mysteries. For free. For everyone.
Their loss if they wanna stay dumb and mad.
Pretty sure God’s not big on stealing stuff that ain’t yours, too. These “churches” are cults of lost, confused, angry children, and I pray they find their brains somewhere along the way.
Thanks for supporting your local libraries, especially as we’re under siege from so many angles every single day.
—With love, a library employee (also a Christian)
Some libraries don’t charge late return fees. I’ve got 3 books I’ve had for like 2 years, only read one of them so far.
Return them. Give someone else the chance to enjoy them too.
My library doesn’t charge late fees for children’s books, but does for other books.
Shame on you.
Bruh.
So if I steal a song book from a church that is okay with them. Right?
Sue the church for damages, both physical and mental. It should cost them a lot to promote bigotry and hate.
Can’t it be both? No one ever said that civil disobedience is without consequences. The consequences here are that the people who stole the books have to pay for a new one and aren’t able to check out any more books. All they managed to do is take it out of the library’s collection for a little bit and increase the book’s sales by one.
Uhh so if somebody did the same for books about conversion therapy? Would they still consider it civil disobedience or does that become an attack on “freedom of religion.”
I think it would be funnier to checkout copies of the bible and highlight ezekiel 23:20 before returning it.
