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  Friday  February 8  2002    01: 54 AM

Dangerous Books

Harry Potter fans warn against dangerous effects of Bible

OXFORD, Tuesday: A number of concerned British Harry Potter fans have spoken out against the Bible, claiming that the holy text of the Christian Church can cause serious damage to children. “Reading the Bible teaches children to believe in the supernatural,” said one English Literature academic from Oxford University, Lewis Williams. “The tales of Jesus turning water into wine are fairly harmless, but there is a serious risk of children drowning if they try to walk on water,” he said. “And the chance of serious bodily harm isn’t exactly minimised by that whole ‘resurrection-from-the-dead’ story either.”
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Ban These Books Too; It's Only Fair
An open letter to the censors.

One particularly reprehensible author of whom you may have heard is William Shakespeare. He refers to the sex act thoughout many of his plays. In one, he revoltingly calls a black man copulating with a white woman a "black ram tupping a white ewe" [1] and refers to them "making the beast with two backs" [2]. In another, he euphemistically refers to sexual congress as doing "the act of darkness" [3]. Besides all the fornicating, this author often makes jokes from references to human genitalia [4]. Many of his books are full of murder -- of which he also makes jokes [5]. Is nothing sacred?!

There's another set of books that is potentially more disturbing. They appear to have been written by various authors, but since the books are nearly always published as a collection under one cover, I consider them together as one book. You may have heard of them too. They are referred to as Scripture and the Bible.
(...)

Since the Bible is so ubiquitous, it is too bad that a little witchcraft and a few naughty words aren't the worst of it. Unfortunately, it contains many stories of sexual abuse and deviance. Unlike other books you have banned where perversion is related as such, in Scripture, the perverts and abusers are often the people who are supposed to be the heroes. One of the primary heroes is Abraham who is married to his half-sister [8]. Nothing is made of this disgusting little detail, as if incest were the most natural thing in the world. Does this not at least fall under the category of "unsuited to age group", the third most frequent excuse for banning books during the past decade?
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thanks to BookNotes