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.”
Civil disobedience often comes with the cost of breaking the law and ensuring 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.
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.
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)
So if I steal a song book from a church that is okay with them. Right?
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.”
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.
Not a hate crime, but they could easily stack on criminal conspiracy and solicitation charges.
I get both sides of this not or is a hate crime but they make a good point that it is a crime motivated by hate of a specific people/group. So while the law doesn’t have hate theft listed, it does make sense people would argue it is 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!
It’s a targeted hate crime against LGBTQ. If you can’t see that, you’re part of the problem.
Stealing books alone isn’t a hate crime.
Targeting specific books because you hate a specific group of people, well maybe there’s no hate crime enhancer for theft. But it’s motivated by hate, it’s a hate crime.
What is their motivation for stealing the library books?
Deyr turning the kids geyyyy!
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.
Not only print more of those books, but exhaust the library’s budget for other 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.
please dear God I’ve never asked you for anything before and I’ll never ask for anything again but
ICBMs covered in glitter.
ICBMs where the payload is glitter: new war crime unlocked. Glitter will be there for centuries to come
But biodegradable glitter cause we’re not planet-hating monsters!
Nuclear disarmament is easy once we have something worse
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.
I think they are saying that civil disobedience is seperate from criminal disobedience. Which theft is criminal.
So protesting by standing on the sidewalk, civil disobedience; protesting in the middle of the street in a place with laws against, would be criminal disobedience.
In this case theft was clearly criminal.
I wonder how long it would take for them to cry foul if a group did the same thing for all of the Christian-themed books in the libraries…
Only one way to find out.
That’s the spirit!
I mean, they open their doors every week to allow all who want to worship with them to enter into their space and share resources. Most places have prayer books and hymnals just laying around for all to use. Those items certainly wouldn’t be expected to “walk away” typically, but it sure would be inconvenient for the churchgoers of that establishment if that were to start happening, I’d imagine. And the staff would have to replenish volumes to ensure they have enough on-hand. Every single week, this happens. If it’s the church causing the pain that happens to start wondering where all the spare books went, that’s gonna be a bigger statement than the library books going missing. Guess who will be happy to provide a general summary of all the info that suddenly disappeared from the libraries? If you guessed The Church Spoken Of Earlier, you see where I’m going…
The library might not be the target you are seeking, is all I’m saying. They are usually staffed by very nice and nerdy people with small budgets and a desire to help their communities have equitable access to information.
Yeah, but that would require actually going into a church on a regular basis.
Headphones and watch videos? Plus a lot of them have juice, coffee and snacks!
Are you saying I should take those bibles from the Jackasses that stand in front of my university science building doors every semester? Maybe ask for the whole box? I wonder if bibles are recyclable lol
Absolutely. As many as possible. Then bin em.
The thin pages sure do make a nice tinder for the campfire.
I’ve seen them used more often as rolling papers.
You mean rolling papers?
You don’t want to smoke the ink
Speak for yourself
And toilet paper.
The difference is that the church would just pass the credit card reader around and get all new bibles every week. And they can throw in a little underage hooker for the priest, as a treat
Good. Make them spend more money.
And who gives that money? The people that support the church. Who doesn’t pay that money? The tax payers who already bought books once for the library. That’s the real difference. Instead of everyone footing the bill for this nonsense, imagine a world where the problem is mitigated with ONE EASY TRICK.
Edit to add: stealing from the library is just an ugly move, that’s all I’m saying. Libraries are learning institutions.
No, the church supporters take a tax deduction that leads to everyone still footing the bill.
Theft and destruction of books is bad, period. Even fucking mein kampf should be allowed to exist (with context).
But if the goal is to actually make it go away? Churches will just fleece Those People and The People Who Don’t Want To Antagonize Those People.
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)
As an imperfect, trying-my-best Christian, thank you for sticking up for us, outnumbered and doing our best in this dark world whilst getting false-flagged by hate-cults since the beginning.
It’s safe to say we genuinely love you for it. <3
Take good care. :)
I recognize that you are out there (hot take, I know)
There’s no hate quite like Christian love.
Fake Christians, imho
Nah, these are real Christians. Don’t make their fallacious arguments for them.
I know a (very) few who walk the walk.
This are the only ones I would give the benefit of the doubt to
I know a (very) few who walk the walk.
Right. Exactly. When the majority of the people of a religion behave a certain way, that’s common trait of the religion. “Not walking the walk” is about as Christian as it gets.
American Evangelicals are not the majority of Christians, even though American exceptionalism makes them view themselves as such
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.
