‘Free Exercise of Ignorance’

Will is very considerate of the Tennessee censors. He lists their objections to these books, as they and their lawyers must have done, as religious.

We with less public visibility, hence less tact, can imagine some other reasons. Mightn’t these “spiritual fathers” object more to Frank Baum’s “Wizard of Oz,” social and spiritual leader of Emerald City, as a fraud behind a curtain? He scares his subjects into obedience with a blow-up head and cheap smoke bombs, an image not far removed from hellfire-and-brimstone preachers entertaining their flocks.

Do Anne Frank’s views on religion offend the censor? Or is it her religion itself? Is this attack on free thought and cultural diversity an act of faith or secular bigotry cloaked in the robes of religion?

It is no secret the religious “right” has a long agenda of secular “reforms,” everything from establishing a state religion (gee, I wonder which one?) to strict media censorship. “Creationism “ may be Christianity in technical drag or just bogus pseudo-science. Whatever it is, to demand its instruction in public schools as if it really were science is flatly anti-constitutional.

But this doesn’t bother certain so-called fundamentalists. If the devil hides behind American democracy, then American democracy must be pulled down to the greater glory of God, Amen. And if that doesn’t sound like advocating overthrow of the American government, I don’t know what does.

JEFF G.F. WATKINS

Los Angeles