Like a lot of other mostly-rural states, Maine is crammed to the gills with religious nutjobs. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting some Jesus freak, even in the bigger towns, like the one where I grew up. I attribute it to a mixture of generational poverty, rural suspicion of education, a higher-than-usual percentage of inbreeding, and too much Allen’s Coffee Brandy. And that doesn’t even include the Catholics!
But I digress. This post at BoingBoing pulls together a bunch of links about a resident of Lewiston named JoAn Karkos, who decided that it was her God-given prerogative to remove a book she didn’t like from the public libraries in both Lewiston and Auburn by checking them out and not returning them. The book — It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health — offended her Christian sensibilities because it had nekkid pitchers in it and talked about homos. And we all know Jesus HATES the homos.
Last week, she even had to go to court and risk jail time, but at the last minute the Lewiston City Manager stepped in and said that the city would not file the papers necessary to prosecute her for contempt of court.. How’s that for savvy political maneuvering, eh? If Sarah Palin doesn’t work out, maybe McCain can draft him — he certainly has more experience.
That last link has several links to earlier stories about the Cranky Old Lady and the Naughty Book if you’re interested. In the end, she got to keep the books, and the two libraries just bought new copies, so I guess everyone is happy.
