David*Macinnis*Gill.com

Thank good­ness, our shared val­ues are served. An arti­cle from the Raleigh News Observer tells of a group of con­cerned par­ents who are stand­ing up for val­ues. Theirs. Yours. And Mine, apparently.

Says the N.O.: “A local Chris­t­ian activist group and sev­eral par­ents urged Wake County school lead­ers today to stop requir­ing stu­dents to read four books that they say have vul­gar and sex­u­ally explicit lan­guage. Called2Action and the par­ents are object­ing to Beloved by Toni Mor­ri­son, The Color Pur­ple by Alice Walker and The Choco­late War by Robert Cormier. They argued that some of the lan­guage in these books is not appro­pri­ate for mid­dle school and high school stu­dents.”

Just in case you don’t have time to find the vul­gar­ity in Color Pur­ple and Beloved, Called2Action has posted the pas­sages in ques­tion on its pub­licly acces­si­ble web­site here so that any­one with a web browser can read the exerpts out of con­text and with­out adult supervision.

Hmm. Now just a minute. There’s a con­tra­dic­tion here. You don’t want kids read­ing the words, Cen­sors, so you pub­lish the words in an attempt to stop them from read­ing the words?

The Con­cerned Ones say that they are stand­ing up for our shared val­ues, but I don’t share the value that allows some­one to assume the role of Cen­sor. The Con­si­tu­tion doesn’t allow it. Nei­ther does the Supreme Court.

“Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise thereof; or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble, and to peti­tion the Gov­ern­ment for a redress of grievances.”

— The First Amend­ment to the U.S. Constitution

I always find it ironic that some Cen­sors try to jus­tify their actions with the same Amend­ment that pro­tects both our right to express reli­gion alsoand pro­tects our right to free speech and a free press.

You don’t get to keep part of the amend­ment, Cen­sor, that fits YOUR val­ues and then chuck out the rest.