Jennifer Meeks, the wife of an Arkansas GOP lawmaker, has made herself the unofficial censor of her neighbors' Little Free Libraries. She posted on Facebook recently about her efforts to remove "terrible books" and replace them with Bibles. Via Raw Story:
"I have been swapping out books in little free libraries for awhile," she wrote in a Facebook post earlier this month. "I have seen good books, terrible books... Recently I have been picking up free Bibles at flea markets and thrift stores. Sometimes I find good devotion books or kids’ Bible stories at a good price to add. Or just great books, and a gospel tract is a nice idea too.”
Meeks said she was inspired to do this after seeing a lot of LGBTQ Pride-themed books in the libraries.
"From what I have seen a lot of these books and other things don’t align with Christian values," she wrote. "Today, I saw a bunch of Pride stuff in one. There’s a group of leftists, especially in Conway, who are very active in keeping little libraries well stocked."
Isn't that special.
The Censor-In-Chief has since made her Facebook page private. Guess deciding which books other people get to read isn't as popular as she'd like to think!
The Faulkner County Coalition for Social Justice said that her efforts would not stop people in the area from stocking libraries with quality reading material.
"Keep removing them, Jennifer," they said. "We won’t stop."
When I was in the third grade, I did a book report on "The Cardinal," a bestseller my mother was reading. Turns out the book was on the Catholic church's "condemned" list (maybe it was the priest protagonist having an affair, or his sister dying in childbirth because he wouldn't give permission for an abortion?), and my book report got my mother a stern phone call from the nun who taught my class.
My mother stood up to her. Said as long as I was old enough to read it, she has no problem with it. "If any of it is too mature for her, it will go right over her head," she said.
I was shocked to have my mother question a nun. But good for her! And for me, because I continued to read whatever the hell I wanted.
UPDATE: And her Facebook post, since deleted.
