Stealing from libraries is not Biblical—or moral

As if it weren’t bad enough that numer­ous ultra-right groups like Moms for Liberty (a com­plete­ly oxy­moron­ic title for a group that active­ly pur­sues the cur­tail­ment of lib­er­ty for those not in accord with their views) are attack­ing libraries across the nation, a unique form of cen­sor­ship has cropped up in Kentucky.  It’s a prac­tice that is prob­a­bly being repli­cat­ed else­where in the coun­try but we are only now hear­ing about it in our state due to the dili­gence of the Kentucky Lantern.

The lead­ers of a Shelbyville church have tak­en it upon them­selves to encour­age their con­gre­gants to steal books from the Shelby County library.  And it appears that sev­er­al mem­bers of that church have thus far removed six­teen books val­ued at $410.85 since June of last year.  The church lead­ers char­ac­ter­ize their activ­i­ty as an “act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence,” but it is more cor­rect­ly defined as steal­ing.  And it’s not just steal­ing from the library, it’s steal­ing from all the peo­ple of Shelby County who pay tax­es in sup­port of their library.

Pastor Jerry Dorris of the Reformation Church of Shelbyville claims that, under Kentucky law, fail­ure to return a library book is not pros­e­cut­ed as theft but as a civ­il mat­ter.  The library is await­ing a response from Shelby County Attorney Carrie McIntyre regard­ing the law.   Pastor Dorris fur­ther claims that God’s law does not cat­e­go­rize the actions of the mem­bers of the church as theft. One might rea­son­ably ques­tion whether Pastor Dorris has actu­al­ly read the Seventh Commandment.  Taking with the intent of not return­ing is pret­ty clear­ly defined as stealing.

Dorris is quot­ed as say­ing, “Many who cheered riots and loot­ing now clutch the Ten Commandments to con­demn us for sug­gest­ing vile books be removed from libraries.”  Suddenly, oppo­si­tion to unlaw­ful­ly remov­ing books from a library is now only attrib­uted to per­sons who “cheered riots and loot­ing,” not to rea­son­able, car­ing, ratio­nal tax­pay­ing indi­vid­u­als, most of whom prob­a­bly belong to anoth­er church in the community.

And one has to won­der if these “civic-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als” who are out to pro­tect the rest of Shelby County from mate­ri­als they per­son­al­ly deem “vile” and “wicked,” as described by Dorris, will ven­ture into oth­er near­by coun­ties and steal the books from those libraries.

Of course, all the mate­ri­als removed thus far have been relat­ed to LGBTQ themes, all clas­si­fi­ca­tions, inci­den­tal­ly, which were embraced by Jesus him­self, at least accord­ing to the Bible that Pastor Dorris is prob­a­bly using.

If Pastor Dorris and every sin­gle one of the mem­bers of the Reformation Church of Shelbyville don’t want to read or be exposed to any kind of mate­r­i­al that deals with LGBTQ issues, that is their right.  It is not their right to deny access to those mate­ri­als to any­one else, no mat­ter how they may couch their activ­i­ties under an umbrel­la of doing God’s work.

They would prob­a­bly be appalled if some­one removed the Bible from the library because of an objec­tion to its depic­tions of rape and pil­lage and mur­der and the prop­a­ga­tion of slav­ery and incest.

Fortunately the Shelby County library has already received con­tri­bu­tions in excess of what is nec­es­sary to replace the books stolen, but vig­i­lance must be enhanced and pun­ish­ment met­ed out for any fur­ther thefts.