The Yeti\’s Cyber Smithy

I am approved.

First let me warn that when I brag about this, I know there will be a backlash against me for doing so. Folk are going to scream that I promote censorship and yada yada. Well, yes I do promote censorship. I do not think that people in prison for racially inspired crimes should be provided with racist literature. I do not think that people who are in prison for raping children should be provided with literature, which promotes the pedophilic literature.

I also do not think that the federal government has a responsibility for providing each and every book on a subject to a prison library system. The chose alone would be staggering. So I have no problem with the Federal Government coming up with an approved list, a guideline for how my tax money should be spent. I also see no problem with the government preventing convicted criminals from having access to material which promotes criminal behavior.

When a person is convicted of a crime, one’s rights become privileges, which can be taken away when necessary. As books which encourage crime exist and are propagated under the guise of religious instruction exist, it seems necessary that an approved list exist.

In Ohio, prisoners tell me that books on subjects such as Wicca are sometimes considered institutionally blacklisted and require special permission to enter the prison. I am told the exact opposite is true of books on Christianity. Such are reportedly automatically white listed and require an investigation to be blacklisted. As such does not seem fair and as there seems to be a genuine issue of security, I think that when the Federal Government went out of its way to create an approved reading list, it did Federally imprisoned people a great favor. For with this list in place, a prisoner can say look…. Someone has already said this is acceptable reading material, look you can not arbitrarily ban it because it is pagan in nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/us/21prison.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190377672-S0BnMRA8FXtZ6SKuy8mktw&oref=slogin

Per the article, the Federal Government ordered research in the hopes of first defining about 150 items for each of 20 categories of religion. Pagan is one of those categories.

Now keep in mind, this list is what the Federal Government is considering a starting point. ANY book may be added to this list of freely available books if a Chaplain is willing to read the thing and APPROVE IT in accordance with specific guidelines concerning its content and the security threat that content might pose. NOT based on individual religious preferences.

So why am I about to brag? Guess who is on that list? Yep, of all of the books that the Federal Prison system is recommending for the category Pagan, there are only about 25, which could be considered remotely representative of the Wiccan religion. Within that group of books, I would personally argue that while they are certainly pagan, they are not Wiccan as although the word Wicca is in their title, the contents have nothing to do specifically with Wicca. As an example: Wicca Craft by Dunwitch is a collection of spells.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/200709_PRISON/Pagan.pdf

This is Amazing ! Seriously guys. A publisher’s cudos or an award at an INATS is all fine and dandy, but when the Federal Government says that you are one of the authors which it believes represents your religion well, my my that is one hell of a compliment. I don’t think I have been this proud of something since my son was born.