You bring up a good point regarding the dead-weight value of Bibles.
These people are replacing items with monetary value with items that have no monetary value. The LFL are honor-based operations, but are there some obscure points of law, some long-ago cases, that could result in arrest on theft charges?
Side note: Does the Prosperity Gospel have anything to say about this? /s
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Context: Up here in Canada
We have a little free library on our property. We’ve been lucky to have very little problems with it so far. Some LDS/Mormon stuff added as we have a few neighbours of that ilk. Once some watch-tower rags, and recently some of the higher production value Seventh Day Adventist’s magazines.
I kept the book of Mormon out of my own curiosity, the Joho waste was treated as such. The 7th day stuff I looked at out of curiosity then turfed.
The only non-religious book I removed for a reason other that something being too damaged was something by Ezra Levant.
If you’re not familiar with Ezra, you can look him up or just imagine the Canadian version of Tucker Carlson would be like.
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EXACTLY. No notes. Excellent post.
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In 20 years of religious life I’ve encountered 1 (one) person who volunteered an interest in the bible and didn’t own a copy. They were a colleague at work who had decided they wanted to read for themself rather than relying on being told what it said by their family, and we helped them pick a non-crazy translation. So it’s not absolutely impossible that someone might see a copy in a LFL and want it. I honestly think they’re much more likely to want the fine LGBTQ-friendly stuff that the congressman’s wife improperly removed though! (Or just possibly both).
I’m in Britain, not the US, mind. The bible is not, shall we say, as forcibly distributed here as in parts of the US.
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The book-wallah was an itinerant peddler of books who wandered from
station to station throughout Upper Burma. His system of exchange
was that for any book in his bundle you gave him four annas, and
any other book. Not quite ANY book, however, for the book-wallah,
though analphabetic, had learned to recognize and refuse a Bible.
‘No, sahib,’ he would say plaintively, ‘no. This book (he would
turn it over disapprovingly in his flat brown hands) this book with
a black cover and gold letters–this one I cannot take. I know not
how it is, but all sahibs are offering me this book, and none are
taking it. What can it be that is in this black book? Some evil,
undoubtedly.’
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Ezra Levant feels like he should fall under some religious banner, like Mammon.
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Christ, what an asshole.
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Wait, what? They’re silent? Since when?
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LOL.
This is 100% true. I found a box in the woods.
I HOPE it was rain soaked.
Also one up in the access rafters at Rec Hall
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A good craft project would be to take the Bibles that no one wants, take off their shiny covers, and use them to cover books that young people actually want to read. You’d have to have some indication in the library as to what the actual contents were.
Props to everyone who hosts a free library on their property, it’s such a nice thing to do.
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Many years ago we had a job cleaning a factory, one of our employees said they couldn’t get the greasy foot print of the toilet seat.
Oh really? I had good money on drugs or liquor in the ceiling vent. Nope, a big stack of porn.
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Thank you for fighting indoctrination. You know, what the GOP claims they’re doing.
I wonder how Ms. Meeks would react if someone went into her church, gathered up all the Bibles and placed them in a storage closet, and replaced them in the pews with some other book (like a basic science text.) Would she be so supportive of that attempt to combat indoctrination?
Your local library probably has a couple copies, or there’s (several) copies of the King James version on Project Gutenberg. This is useful for quoting in discussions like on Boing Boing or Facebook.
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We had a problem with people stealing the local LGBt+ free newspaper. They had to put signs on it that said first one is free, additional copies are 25 cents. That way they could prosecute people for taking all the papers and throwing them away. This was happening at Vanderbilt University. An employee was throwing all the copies away when they were delivered. They used cameras to find her and they fired her. I believe she was prosecuted for theft.
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LOL. I"ve been tossing Gideon Bibles in the trash bins for years…
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I know how this goes. I swap out James Patterson books in our little free library. I want my neighbors to have access to a better class of book.
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if jennifer had actually read the bible, she’d remove that book from the library as well.
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That’s fine. I take Bibles out and replace them with Charlie Jane Anders books and books by other queer authors.
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