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.”
Sue the church for damages, both physical and mental. It should cost them a lot to promote bigotry and hate.
Yeah, so when you take something that isn’t yours and don’t give it back. That’s theft.
Of course religious freaks are going to create their own reality in which theft isn’t theft. They’re pros at creating alternate realities when it benefits them.
These are criminals not only committing theft, but also a hate crime.
I’m sorry, but stealing a book from a library is not a hate crime, although I get the context and your sentiment. I would say that I’m low-key impressed by their sort of shenanigans as I admire civil disobedience.
It makes me feel like the alternative is to crowdsource some funding, buy all these books back, and… hold the thieves accountable by not allowing them to be lent books until paid or returned. Plus the stupid church people amp up library card holder numbers for funding from local taxes!
This ultimately just leads to more sales of the book they hate when the library has to replace it.
It’s not civil disobedience if the root of the action is hate. It’s just expressions of hate and repression
Imagine doing shit like this and thinking history will remember you fondly.
“Are we the baddies?”
I’ve worked in libraries and this isn’t a new tactic. The funny thing to me is that the library will almost always rebuy the missing book unless they were planning on removing it anyway, so the net result is a signal to the publishers to print more LGBTQ books.
This is the butterfly flutter that brings about the first trans president and cements the USA as the queerest place on Earth, a country so gay that none dare challenge us.
ICBMs covered in glitter.
ICBMs where the payload is glitter: new war crime unlocked. Glitter will be there for centuries to come
I’m not sure what the “or” is for. Acts of civil disobedience are generally illegal or close to it. This is theft and civil disobedience, though not one I agree with (nor do I think it would be particularly effective, tbh). But something being civil disobedience doesn’t make it not illegal or not wrong it’s just the reasoning behind doing it.
So much for “Thou shalt not steal.”
But then, the most ardent believers do the most cherry picking with The Bible.
Reading the bible, at least the old testament, it’s pretty obvious that the commandments generally apply only towards your fellow kin (that is, another devout person of the religion). Everybody else is usually fair game (for example, during war with an outside tribe you could [should] do whatever - murder, rape, kidnap, steal, etc.)
Even if they followed JESUS himself, they’d love God and then treat everyone else the way they would want to be treated.
Fake Christians, imho
(I’m an atheist)
I’d say it’s both, but for a hateful and regressive cause that I despise.
Steal the bibles from their pews. Steal the after-service refreshments and give them to the homeless.
This is the Reformation Church of Shelbyville, KY.
It sure would be a shame if the bibles they leave out every day went missing.
Those pews look pretty comfy too.
Removed by mod
The library will just bill them after a year. What idiots.
IANAL but the church has stated that they will not return the books. I’m pretty sure that makes it theft, Petty Theft*, but still theft with a penalty of up to 1 year in jail and $500 fine. Still it’s probably simpler for library to just bill them after a year and then turn the bill over to collections when they refuse to pay it. They should replace the books so that people who are interested in them can borrow them.
Of course, there’s every chance that those new books will also be stolen. If that happens, I say they should replace them again. And keep replacing them, and I’ll tell you why. The library obviously knows who borrowed the books. Once an individual has stolen enough books to cross the $500 threshold for Grand Theft in the state of Kentucky. The penalty for that can be several years in prison plus restitution. The article states that the missing books are valued at $410.85, so they’re not far short of it if a single person took the missing books.
And then ban the people from the library.
they would find out if they could read
If they could read, they probably wouldn’t be so bigoted and angry about books
Most libraries wolnt let you check out more if you have overdue books. Also fairly certain it dings your credit if they sell the debt.
Yeah but it’s a year. They consider that a win.
This would be a good charity that sees what books have been missing, buy them and just drop them in the library return box. Also, picket that church and dig into the pastor’s dealings with their community. I bet they have secrets.
I mean, the consequence is generally not being allowed to checkout more books.
It’s not even considered petty larceny.
It would be hilarious if you were able to sum everything up and roll it into a RICO or something. I just don’t think it would hold up.
Civil disobedience is a peaceful way to protest unfair laws when the regular methods of changing the law are too restricted or too slow to protect the civil rights of citizens. Civil disobedience in this case would be refusing to check out or read books that they find objectionable, if the government were to mandate that they be read.
You could make the argument that government is mandating this content if public schools assign it to students, but there is no real punishment under the law for rejecting a school assignment. It’s that they don’t want YOU to have access to this information, which is the opposite of civil disobedience: oppression. If the government were to mandate the removal of this content, as these citizens would like, the act of disobedience would be to read the books.
This is stealing from a public library.
This is the best description I’ve seen yet. It’s censorship at best and criminal imho.
Just send a bill to the church for the books. If they don’t pay, you sue them.
Charge them late fees and use the funds to buy more copies. Make them required to have a debit card on file in order to check out more if they have more than 5 late books.
