VirusHead

These people – yes, that’s the perjorative phrase “these people” – fill me with bewilderment, disgust and just plain old loathing.

Baby used as a weapon:
In Erie, Pennsylvania, a month-old baby was critically injured when anti-mom Chytoria Graham (27) “allegedly” swung the baby through the air to strike her boyfriend – with her baby – in a domestic dispute. The baby suffers from a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain. Four other children were removed from the home.

Torture of an animal, terrorizing children:
Here in Atlanta, Joshua (17) and Justin Moulder (18) “are alleged to have” bound a puppy with duct tape, then doused her with paint and baked her in an oven at a community center of Englewood Manor Apartments. Then they enticed neighborhood children in to the center to see the dead puppy. Then they threatened to kill the children if they told anyone.

This one is a little more subtle:

Another Georgia Fanatic Wants to Ban Books from School:
Loganville anti-mom Laura Mallory is using every available means to insist that Harry Potter books are banned from all Gwinnett County public schools. She has gone over the head of the Gwinnett school board and presented the case to the state Board of Education. Mallory can still appeal to Gwinnett County Superior Court if this goes against her. She should sit down with the author J. K. Rowling and hear how the first book was written, so that she could develop a working definition of momhood.

Gwinnett County Taxpayer Cost: More than $4,000 – not counting staff time – and rising. MacBeth is next, and the Wizard of Oz, and the Narnia books, and most fairy tales, and….

Mallory is actually being taken seriously in her view that Harry Potter books represent an organised attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion. “I surely don’t want them indoctrinated into a religion whose practices are evil,” says Mallory.

An evangelical Wiccan conspiracy, yet. Now I’ve heard everything.

Now, what evil practices would those be again? And – oh, let me guess – what’s your religion? Don’t get me started on definitions of “evil practices,” just read some books on history or world economics (unless those aren’t allowed in your house either?).

How about this? You could always be a parent and monitor what your children are allowed to read (under your very limited ideas about acceptable education, literature and religion).

Keep your dour hands off our libraries and schools.

Harry Potter is fantasy literature. Fantasy literature is not identical to pagan belief or practice, Wiccan or otherwise.

If your kids are not able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, then they have bigger problems than an embarrassing mother. Yes, I know, a lot of people have problems distinguishing between fantasy and reality, but let’s just assume there’s a remedy here. You could start with Pilgrim’s Progress, for example (assuming that simple allegory and metaphor aren’t too traumatic for you).

I was raised in a Jehovah’s Witness household, but even my parents did not forbid me to read fantasy. I read Watchtower publications, sure, but I also read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Secret Garden and A Wind in the Door and The Magician’s Nephew (Narnia) and The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Dune books, and anything else I could get my hands on.

My love of imaginative and challenging works of fiction enabled me to grow and to thrive in ways that would have been impossible otherwise. Oh, and by the way, serious readers rarely have problems passing standardized tests. You learn a lot by osmosis.

Deny quality reading experiences to children at your peril!

I’m going to assume that I know your political party. I’m speculating that if times were just the slightest bit different, you’d be first in line to stone someone to death, first in line to hang a woman accused of witchcraft.

You’re a literalist, more concerned with rules than wisdom or understanding. Wave the flag, sieg heil, whatever.

You’re no better than a puppy torturer or a baby-thrower. You have the same basic lack of empathy, the same disregard for others.

You’re yet another symptom of the decline of our freedom and democracy, our literacy, our wisdom – and yes, our spirituality. The losses that we have sustained in these areas represent a clear and present danger to our country.

I know that there is some way of understanding how people can be twisted up in the ways that these people are, but I simply don’t have what it takes to try to understand right now (Lord, give me compassion…. but not yet.)

I spit in your general direction, you mean, vile, loathsome people.