Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Disapparate!
Laura Mallory, a suburban Atlanta soccer, mom has a dream.
"I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again," Mallory says. "I think we need him."
What the schools don't need, according to Mallory, is witchcraft in the library. That's why she's campaigned since 2005 to have J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books disapparate from school libraries there.
However, for a woman who wants desperately to bring her own fundamentalist Christian God into the public schools, she advances a rather strange argument for banning the Harry Potter books: witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor just rejected her latest effort to pull the popular books off the shelves, but Mallory isn't discouraged. She plans an appeal, and who knows, this time she may even hire an attorney. With the new makeup of the Supreme Court she may even get what she wants.
Mallory says she has evidence that children have thought about acting out spells described in the books. (In fact, I'm thinking how neat it would be to have one of Harry's spells at my disposal now.)
"They don't want the Easter Bunny's power," Mallory says ominously. "The children in our generation want Harry's power, and they're getting it."
I'd bet they're getting a whole lot that Mallory isn't.
"I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again," Mallory says. "I think we need him."
What the schools don't need, according to Mallory, is witchcraft in the library. That's why she's campaigned since 2005 to have J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books disapparate from school libraries there.
However, for a woman who wants desperately to bring her own fundamentalist Christian God into the public schools, she advances a rather strange argument for banning the Harry Potter books: witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor just rejected her latest effort to pull the popular books off the shelves, but Mallory isn't discouraged. She plans an appeal, and who knows, this time she may even hire an attorney. With the new makeup of the Supreme Court she may even get what she wants.
Mallory says she has evidence that children have thought about acting out spells described in the books. (In fact, I'm thinking how neat it would be to have one of Harry's spells at my disposal now.)
"They don't want the Easter Bunny's power," Mallory says ominously. "The children in our generation want Harry's power, and they're getting it."
I'd bet they're getting a whole lot that Mallory isn't.
