Hi Banjology,

I thought I made it clear I was in an unforgiving mood and was therefore making a blanket assumption that slandered a large group of people on the basis of the erratic behavior of an individual.

If I didn’t let me restate it.

I am assuming she’s a crazy Christian. I assume this on the basis of the other crazy Christians I know. I do not mean to imply that there are no crazy people in other religions, nor do I imply that you have to be crazy to be Christian. (though it certainly seems to help with the evanelist fringe)

Basically, yes, I’m a bad person. Live with it.

But I’ll slap $5 down on the virtual table and bet you she is a Christian, and you’d be a fool to take it.

-abs is NOT in a forgiving mood where Christians are involved today since he just got the whole “Convert or die in hell, I’ll pray for you” speech from his brother on an answering machine message, again. *sigh* I seriously wish he’d never converted, broke my mom’s heart.

“I realize she’s a crazy old prude, but if she paid the library for the replacement cost of the books, there shouldn’t be any further issue. If the books had been destroyed or lost under her care, that’s all that would have happened anyway.”

But you see the law often takes into account the intent of the perpetrator, and not just in cases of crazy oldies stealing books.

For example, I hit my neighbour on my street with my car accidentally, is entirely different from hitting him with intent to harm him. Telling the cops afterwards that I did it because I hate him only makes their job easier.

Similarly, misplace the book is entirely different from stealing it. Libraries do not have the resources to investigate why books go missing so they tend to take your words for it. But if she admits that she stole them, then there’s no reason why she should not be reported and prosecuted for her theft.

Clearly she’s one of the same folks who thinks abstinence-only sex education is a good idea, even though it leads to more teen pregnancy, more abortions, and more STDs. Jesus would be SO proud. Having shot yourself in the foot, you’re now only four wounds away from having stigmata!

/Christian with a sense of humor and a much higher tolerance for sex than for idiocy

Then you won’t mind being tried for murder if you accidentally cause someone’s death? Motive is at the heart of our legal system.

Are they going to interrupt radio and tv broadcasts with changes in your mood? Perhaps an iphone app with a color-coded alert system?

Plenty of Christians use and support the library with gusto. In fact, home-schooling religious folks make up a very healthy portion of our patron base and regularly go to bat for libraries on funding.

Proposed solution:
Charge an ‘administrative replacement fee’ to the cost of replacing the books. The fee would be equal to the cost of one book. So for two lost books of $value, the woman pays $(4*value). Now, use the money to purchase four new books. It’s easy to see that after a few cycles of this, the woman should either be bankrupt, all her storage space will be filled with books, or she will be gibbering uncontrollably in a padded room.

To illustrate: Assume the books in question costs $20 apiece, and that it takes 2 weeks to replace them. After 36 weeks of this, here total expenditure will be over 1 million dollars. After only one year of this, she will be spending over 2.6 billion dollars per fortnight. No one, and certainly not some backwoods morality wackjob, can sustain that sort of outlay.

Once her bankruptcy point is reached, throw the book at her. Now she won’t be facing charges for a couple of library books, she will be facing charges for massive theft of public property.

Lock her away for a long time, donate the books to primary schools around the country.

Result: Children get to learn about sex, the author and publisher get stinking rich, she gets to be a martyr. Everybody happy.

When I’m in a more forgiving mood, which is most days, I’ll readily admit there are a great and vast majority of good people who are Christian. Alas they are typically a SILENT majority who let the whackos filled with hate run their churches and dominate public discourse.

Jesus sounds like a really nice guy. And those who actually follow what he said are generally pretty good folk too. But in my experience most Christians don’t follow Jesus nearly as much as they do the Old Testament. And that Old Testament God is a right bastard with plenty of evil things he demands from his followers.

But as I said, I’m not in a forgiving mood at the moment. So it’s stereotypes and bad generalizations all around. Try talking with me when my born-again brother hasn’t been badgering me recently and I’ll probably have a very different approach. But for now I’ll note instead how very few people who wear a WWJD bracelet actually do anything Jesus would approve of.

-abs is still not fond of Christianity and thinks it should probably be called Paulism or OldTestamentianity instead, since very few Christians he’s ever met have been very Christ-like.

#110 Kungfujohnny, did it work? After getting that note from the police, did you return the book? When returning the book, did you ask if it was one of the librarians who pinned the note on your door?

Sheesh. What is the big deal. So, she decided to keep a couple of books. Simple. The library charges her the “lost book” fee. Library uses the fee to buy two fresh copies. That lady can sleep safe and sound knowing that she actually helped purchase two new copies of the book, generating more profit for the publisher and author (that should get her mad). Case closed — as long as she pays her fine.

Because it sets a horrific precedent that could lead to other “moral authorities” doing the same thing across the nation which leads to a ridiculous sell/buy cycle that the library should not be involved in. Can you imagine, lunatics across the country organizing fund raising drives to support their “actions” to remove unwanted books from shelves of public libraries?

It’s the a can or worms opened by the thin edge of the wedge on a slippery slope.

The fact that she is stating her moral reasons for stealing these books should really get her locked up. It’s abuse of a public resource and harassment in the least.

I praise God for JoAn Karkos’s righteous act. She is doing what a true Christian is called to do. And she shall be rewarded by the Father. But some will reap what they sow both in this life and the life to come.

…to…

I have this book, which I have read cover to cover, and intend to give to my nine-year old daughter. Too many people in this country have the backward notion that information on reproductive health and sexuality will automatically drive children/teens to become sexually active. If you raise your children with a positive moral code and clear expectations, you have done all you can do. I would rather my children be sexually active with the proper information and knowledge to protect their health and emotional well-being, than to foolishly lose their virginity with ignorance, unsafe practices, and emotional distress. Parents cannot control their childrens’ sexuality or sexual activity. They can only hope that they have raised them to be proactive about their health and behavior, and that they will make rational choices. Give them the tools to do that – which means NOT leaving them in a cloud of ignorance.”

Two different people managed to make me sad and proud within minutes of each other. Humanity is a nutty bunch.

45 years ago today Martin Luther King made a really fine point, lots of them really, about judging people on the content of their character. That’s my preferred manner of thinking.

I tend to avoid generalizations (librarianship is all about specificity after all) when I can. Even the benign and (almost) wholly accurate ones are just lazy thinking.

And aside; When some very angry Christians complained about “The God Delusion” at a board meeting I was one of the librarians who spoke in favor of it. I’m a Unitarian by the way.

The answer to speech isn’t censorship, private or otherwise, but more speech.

*shakes head*

Darn right about the answer to speech not being censorship. I’m a huge free-speech proponent, in fact I like all the rights in the Bill of Rights.

Generally I try to avoid generalizations. But when I read a story like this I really do make the assumption, based on her actions and appearance, that the woman in question is a Christian. Maybe she’s not, and surely my generalization will prove false at some point. But for now, I’m gonna stick with my bet.

As for judging people on their character, I think that means judging them on their actions. I find this woman’s actions, and therefore her character, despicable. (not that I haven’t been despicable in my weaker moments as well, most of us probably have been)

Well, I’m glad you’re at least owning up to the fact that you’re ignorant on some days.

Please, “ignorant” isn’t the word your looking for, “bigoted” is.

I assure you that after going to high-school on a Catholic Monastery, doing time as an Anglican, attending Catholic grade-school, and as a born-again when I was younger, the word “Ignorant” does not describe my relationship to Christianity in the least.

I know Christianity’s history, and I know a lot of bad “Christians”, that’s why “Hate-filled bigot” is a much better descriptive of my status vis a vis Christianity than “ignorant” is.

(In the spirit of not lying I also know some Christians who are excellent people of great moral character that I admire greatly, and I know some seriously messed up atheists and agnostics, like me for example, who are not.)

Thanks.

-abs does not being mis-identified as ignorant of Christianity, he knows far too much about it and hates it because of that knowledge not due to a lack of it.