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.”
Stealing from a library should be a deadly sin like kicking a puppy or pineapple on a pizza.
It’s a fucked up state of affairs when people think putting pineapple on a pizza is worse than putting the secretions and flesh of vulnerable individuals who suffered cruelty and violence under atrocity on a pizza.
Look, if you weee to torture me for a couple years make sausage out of me then eat it, i might be annoyed.
If you were to make it trash wiyh pineapple, i would definitely be annoyed.
Copium disguised as humour.
Are you one of those people who tjinks you shouldn’t joke about horrible shit just because it’s horrible, but also cannot handle being in any way not a good person? Because im neither thing.
Sue the church for damages, both physical and mental. It should cost them a lot to promote bigotry and hate.
It’s usually in the eye of the beholder I suppose. To this beholder I would say that civil disobedience implies resistance to an unjust law. Is this an unjust law? I don’t see any. I don’t even see a law they’re objecting too. I see them trying to remove books because they hate people that are different from them. They want to erase people from existence they don’t like. So no that’s not civil disobedience. That’s just the same horrendous despicable vile heinous hatred that these people do and have done for the better part of 2,000 years.
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.
Looks like those topics are incredibly popular! Replace the missing volumes and expand the section!
Go to their church, and borrow money from the collection tray without returning it
Uncivil disobedience
Theft, plain and simple. The only hope is that they actually read those books and learn something.
Maybe the library should raise and enforce their late-return-fees…
It’s also a criminal conspiracy.
We can only hope the judge sees it as such, too.
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.
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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.
Intent matters. Losing a book isn’t theft. Checking one out with intent to keep it is. Normally this would be very hard to prove, in this case it’s not.
And yeah, if one of the members of the congregation did this and then sold the books. And then donated that back to the church, the pastor could be charged for running a criminal syndicate which is a class c felony in Kentucky.
But I would be really surprised if a Kentucky jury would allow the charges to stick. Even if a DA was willing to try and prosecute
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.
So if I steal a song book from a church that is okay with them. Right?
There’s a nice wall over there perhaps some of these people would like to lean on it. And then I have these exciting pieces of lead I wish to introduce them to
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…
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.
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.
You mean rolling papers?
You don’t want to smoke the ink
Speak for yourself
But then how will I feel the Holy Spirit inside of me?
cough cough
And toilet paper.
I’ve seen them used more often as rolling papers.
Can confirm they work great for this purpose.
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!
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.
Only one way to find out.
That’s the spirit!
They wouldn’t give a shit if the library burnt down.
