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« Indians Protest Attacks on Christians | Main | Susan B. Anthony on Sarah Palin »

August 29, 2008

Grandma to Face Jail Time for Keeping Library Book?

This story from is from pewsitter:

Time is running out for JoAn Karkos. The Maine woman has until 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 29 to return the sexually explicit children's book It's Perfectly Normal to a public library in Lewiston.

If she does not, the 64-year-old grandmother may face jail time.

"I'm not giving the book back," Karkos said. "Every citizen has an obligation to protect the innocence of children."

Meant as sex education for preteens and adolescents as young as 10, It's Perfectly Normal contains cartoons of naked men and women in various sexual poses, long-winded descriptions of masturbation and homosexuality as depictions of 'perfectly normal' behavior.

It's been endorsed and circulated by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation's largest abortion chain.

Posted by James M. Kushiner at 10:25 AM | Permalink

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Actually, it would be very good if Granny went to trial and then to the clink. This would be real martyrdom, which would set an example for others while revealing once and for all the bare-assed power play behind all such sex education schemes. If the state wins, it loses. If it loses it loses. Win or lose, the good guys win.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2008 12:23:23 PM

It seems to me that there would be a perfectly legal way to remove the book from circulation without risking jail time. All you'd need to do is get a few people together and simply place holds on the book, so as soon as one person returns it the next immediately checks it out. I suppose the library could respond by changing their policy, but no one would risk jail.

Posted by: Ethan C. | Aug 29, 2008 12:28:13 PM

>>>It seems to me that there would be a perfectly legal way to remove the book from circulation without risking jail time. All you'd need to do is get a few people together and simply place holds on the book, so as soon as one person returns it the next immediately checks it out.<<<

Where's the fun in that? Steal the book, take your lumps, dare them to put you on trial. if the Powers That Be were not so convinced of their own righteousness, they would simply buy another copy of the book. Instead, they are going to cost the Lewiston taxpayers a bundle to prosecute this old biddy, making jackasses of themselves in the process. My guess is the whole thing goes away very quietly as soon as someone in the Lewiston government realizes that the whole town is going to be a national laughingstock on U-Tube.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2008 12:56:36 PM

Can the librarians and the prosecutor be successfully charged with child pornography and pandering to children?

Posted by: labrialumn | Aug 29, 2008 1:11:43 PM

>>>My guess is the whole thing goes away very quietly as soon as someone in the Lewiston government realizes that the whole town is going to be a national laughingstock on U-Tube.<<<

Let's hope that no one in Lewiston government is that bright a bulb. I'm looking forward to the trial.

Ethan,

Grandma wants the publicity. Avoiding the risk of jail would take away much of the public relations benefit to be derived from the exercise. Expect your library school profs to use this as an example of the brave, enlightened librarians fighting the good fight against the barbarians at the gates. (I caused quite a stir in my day when I argued in library school against providing a convicted child molester with books on how to influence children. I really got the room steaming when I asked why the liberals in the class were willing to trample on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens who wanted firearms because of the off chance that they might misuse them, but would defend to the death the First Amendment "right" of a known pedophile to have access to material which he was likely to use to harm a child. I suggested to them that if they were to be consistent in their concerns for constitutional rights, they would, at a minimum, need to join the NRA at the same time that they joined the ALA.) The ALA will likely have add the librarian at Lewiston to its official canon of saints.

Posted by: GL | Aug 29, 2008 1:13:00 PM

Someone somewhere one time related to me a tactic that -- if Grandma had employed it -- would have realized the same end, and left her unfettered to employ it repeatedly. This person would find books like what Grandma found in the children's section and would remove it from the shelf. Beforehand, this person had discovered sections of the library that appeared near to never consulted, and then he (I'm using the inclusive masculine here) would reshelve the pestilent tome.

He told me that the bigger the library, the more effective this tactic is.

Posted by: Fr. Bill | Aug 30, 2008 4:07:10 PM

I do that all the time, but for a different reason. I want to be able to find the books I am using on a particular project, and do not want to check them out or give them to the librarian to hold, so I put them in an obscure part of the library (you can tell by how much dust is on the shelves), which has the added benefit of almost always having an open carrel or two. In effect, I create my own private library in the library.

However, granny's purpose was not merely to keep the book out of the hands of children, it was to expose the perfidious agenda of the library itself.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 30, 2008 4:44:00 PM

Stuart,

What if somebody else also needs access to the book? If you want guaranteed availability perpetually you should buy the book. If out of print and you can't find it through sources you should be prepared to share.

Posted by: David Gray | Aug 30, 2008 5:44:38 PM

>>>What if somebody else also needs access to the book? If you want guaranteed availability perpetually you should buy the book. If out of print and you can't find it through sources you should be prepared to share.<<<

I usually don't hold onto them for more than a day or so, and given the subjects on which I work, there really isn't that much demand for those books. But, if I take them down off the shelves, use them for a day, then leave them for reshelving, it could be several days before the books get back where they belong (assuming that the get properly shelved at all, a big problem when work-study students do most of the shelving). I just need to have all the books I need in one place for a couple of days, then back they go. The alternative is missing important deadlines.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 30, 2008 5:54:06 PM

You better be careful or the librarians will declare a fatwa on you. One day a copy of the OED could topple off the top shelf.

Posted by: Bobby Neal Winters | Aug 30, 2008 10:12:22 PM

Unabridge? Ouch!

heheheee,

Kamilla

Posted by: Kamilla | Aug 30, 2008 10:16:40 PM

She may not have figured out that strategy.

We shouldn't assume her motives, such as desire for publicity.

There is a danger that the librarian might think it was a very popular book and therefore order more copies.

Posted by: labrialumn | Aug 31, 2008 7:15:55 AM

There is a danger that the librarian might think it was a very popular book and therefore order more copies.

Unlikely. Out of sight, out of mind. When its off the shelf, no browser will "miss" it. The only clue would be the card catalog. Most likely, if she ever noticed all the evidence, the librarian would conclude that persons unknown were stealing the book, and who wants to expend precious library funds on books that will be stolen?

Posted by: Fr. Bill | Aug 31, 2008 7:59:00 AM

I'm using Grandma Karkos in the introduction to my homily in a couple of hours. And, that prompted me to see if Ma Google had any updates.

Sho' 'nuff she did (http://lisnews.org/maine_city_drops_case_against_woman_who_wont_return_normal)

The showdown between the city and JoAn Karkos ended Friday even though Karkos failed to return a library book she has deemed obscene. Karkos will not be ordered to jail for violating a judge's orders. The city will not continue trying to wrest from her a copy of "It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health." There will be no national debate drawn to Lewiston based on the arrest of a 64-year-old grandmother. City leaders believe they made the right choice by choosing to drop the matter. Karkos, they say, still has to pay a $100 fine and cannot return to the library until she does so.

Posted by: Fr. Bill | Aug 31, 2008 8:11:40 AM

>>>Karkos, they say, still has to pay a $100 fine and cannot return to the library until she does so.<<<

She can refuse to pay the fine, forcing the city to confiscate her home. That will look good on TV. As for not showing up in the library, are they going to post WANTED signs with her picture on it? Will she be forced to become a master of disguise in order to infiltrate the security barrier around the Public Library? Will she adopt a superhero persona to hide her true identity? Stay tuned!

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 31, 2008 11:59:06 AM

>>>She can refuse to pay the fine, forcing the city to confiscate her home.<<<

I take it that you are such an upstanding citizen that you've never let library fines accumulate, unlike some others of us. Most librarians are pretty lax about that, except in a very few notorious cases. Granny can go to the library, I'm sure, and browse to her heart's content; she just has no borrowing privileges until she pays her fine. If they don't want to make a case out of her keeping the book, they are sure not going to make a case out of her owing a fine.

Posted by: Judy K. Warner | Aug 31, 2008 9:02:41 PM

Grandma has got me checking, and I've found that that book is in about half of the public libraries in Rhode Island. Most of the copies are in children's sections, including one in my town of Coventry. A couple of the copies are listed as "Adult, Non-Fiction" -- very telling, that. More Google searching suggests to me that the people of Lewiston, Maine, are no longer farmer sorts, but artsy refugees from the city. They oppose Grandma.

I've long wondered what sort of person WANTS to tell children about sex....

Posted by: Tony Esolen | Aug 31, 2008 9:42:29 PM

Perverts

Posted by: William Tighe | Aug 31, 2008 10:21:22 PM

I once lost a book and had to replace it. And I have been overdue more than once (much more, when my children were of the book-burying age. But no, I have never run up fines even close to $100.

>>>If they don't want to make a case out of her keeping the book, they are sure not going to make a case out of her owing a fine.<<<

If they buy a replacement, granny should steal that one, too. Sunlight is the great disinfectant of liberalism. That's why liberals hide under the dark rocks of euphemism, circumlocution and prevarication--once they are shown for what they are, people repudiate them. So, you have to get the sunlight into the dark corners they occupy.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 1, 2008 4:06:03 AM

I once lost a book and had to replace it. And I have been overdue more than once (much more, when my children were of the book-burying age. But no, I have never run up fines even close to $100.

>>>If they don't want to make a case out of her keeping the book, they are sure not going to make a case out of her owing a fine.<<<

If they buy a replacement, granny should steal that one, too. Sunlight is the great disinfectant of liberalism. That's why liberals hide under the dark rocks of euphemism, circumlocution and prevarication--once they are shown for what they are, people repudiate them. So, you have to get the sunlight into the dark corners they occupy.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 1, 2008 4:06:36 AM

>>"It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health." <<

I'm a-bettin it doesn't have a chapter on cold showers and running a few laps.

Posted by: Bobby Neal Winters | Sep 1, 2008 9:09:41 AM

Or saltpetre in the cocoa.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 1, 2008 10:19:54 AM

>>I've long wondered what sort of person WANTS to tell children about sex....<<

Parents who want their teenagers to behave in a sexually responsible manner.

Posted by: Francesca | Sep 1, 2008 12:04:17 PM

>>>Parents who want their teenagers to behave in a sexually responsible manner.<<<

I can' wait until the hormones on yours kick in.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 1, 2008 12:41:07 PM

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