USA Today ran a small blurb the other day about banned books (today they have a small piece about a CD compilation of banned songs), noting that because of its popularity a small group of parents and concerned citizens around the country have tried to have the Harry Potter books removed from libraries, usually at public schools. Some Christians are uncomfortable with the magical imagery and other aspects of the books. Some fans of the series have formed Muggles For Harry Potter to keep track of the attempts to ban the book and fight for its reinstatement.
This is all well and good, but I cannot help but notice there’s a reeking hypocrisy here, driven largely by how the media chooses to cover these sorts of stories. When parents try to ban a Harry Potter book from their school, USA Today covers it in their entertainment section and columnists weigh in with pieces on the intolerance of “hard right” fundamentalist Christians. On the other hand when some bureaucrat tells a young child that he can choose to read any story he wants to his class except for an excerpt from his favorite Biblical story, this gets buried in the news section and columnists either ignore it, or they tend to write how it represents the intolerance of “hard right” fundamentalist Christians.
For several years there was an ongoing controversy of the children’s book “Heather Has Two Mommie,” and the author of that book actually appeared at the university I work at to give a speech about the “reactionary” efforts to suppress her book. The liberal left press had a field day with that topic. But when, several years ago, a young man was prevented from giving his valedictorian speech because he planned to thank Jesus for helping him get through difficult times, nobody in the media seemed to care. Of course if he had been prevented from giving the valedictorian speech because he planned to talk explicitly about safe sex, that would have probably earned him a Time magazine cover.
Hey, I am an atheist and my wife is Wiccan, but it strikes even us as odd that students can talk about Hogwarts, condoms, and Heather having two mommies all day, but in many schools the most important book in Western culture, the Bible, has become verboten.