Sorry if anyone else out there has already blogged about this story. I didn't see anything, so thought it would be safe. This has to be one of my favorite news items of the past week:
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. She is an evangelical Christian who has three children at J.C. Magill Elementary School.
"I think the anti-Christian bias -- it's just got to stop," Mallory said. "And if we don't say something, we'll just keep getting pushed out of the schools. And I pay taxes, too, and I think that gives me a voice to speak out about this."
Instead, in their place, she's itching to stack those quaint Left Behind books, with their bloody apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist revenge fantasies, on the public school shelves. And the best part of all, you ask? Well, it doesn't seem she reads much of anything at all!
Mallory said she has been contacted by other Christian parents who were concerned about the content of the books. On her complaint form, she suggested they be replaced by C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia" series or Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind: the Kids" series.
She 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. I don't have to read an entire pornographic magazine to know it's obscene," Mallory said.
Is this woman off her back porch swing? Narnia? Doesn't that have magic and sorcery in it as well? And how come Tolkien gets off so easy? Hmm. Seems she has a bit of support from a few other parents. The best course of action, if you're a member of the Gwinnett County Public Schools system is to ask: Why not just get rid of ALL the books in the library and turn it into a chapel? Or maybe just get rid of the school system all together and send all the kids to Mallory's house where they can sit around not reading anything much at all. Ah, isn't ignorance bliss when the rapture is near?
And now where would someone who doesn't in fact read the Harry Potter books get her opinions about the Harry Potter books? Why from Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America, of course. Wife of best selling apocalyptic Christian author, Tim LaHaye.