Brilliant move, as there is a critical shortage of Bibles in the state of Arkansas. Anyone who would do this, is too stupid to know any better by definition. As for that silent majority, they are neither silent, nor a majority. In fact, as a rule you can't get them to shut up.
Oh, brother. More territory-marking, more virtue-signaling, only this time with bibles. I'd ask if Ms. Meeks has any semblance of an idea of how JUVENILE she looks in doing this, when it's clear that she could never be bothered to be that introspective. Then, too, she also could never acknowledge that there are OTHER values than her Christian ones, and many of those are more inclusive and less judgmental.
Sadly, she's too busy showing EVERYONE what a good Christian she is to care.
You can’t add value to the libraries by stuffing it full of trash. She’s finding bibles and devotionals free in places that anyone can access, thrift stores can’t even bring themselves to asking money for the Bible’s fercrissakes, and replacing good books with worthless junk. That’s not adding value, or expanding choice. If someone wanted to borrow a Bible they can literally walk into any church anywhere, you know pretty much every corner a Starbucks doesn’t occupy, and ask for one. Hell you don’t even need to ask, they often have them in stacks by the door and all the tracts you can imagine. It isn’t like folks don’t have access to bibles or devotionals or whatever you are littering.
What isn’t readily available is the food, toiletries, reproductive care, naxolone, and positive literature for LGBT people, mostly because these things “don’t align with your Christian values” and your husband is interfering in access to these necessities in his role as lawmaker.
If you want a little free library to align with your Christian values, make one yourself. If you don’t like the literature in the little free libraries, don’t read it. But you do not get to decide for the rest of the community what literature they have access to.
She'll won't like it if someone put a Koran in one of those free libraries. Not to mention putting in a Jewish book about the Nazi holocaust, books about US slavery, books about evolution and science, books about atrocities committed by Christians, etc.
And ofc his wife doesn’t “want to discuss the matter”now that she’s been called out for her actions. Every accusation is an admission of guilt with conservatives in this country. We’d all be a lot better off if they’d worry more about state of their own lives & morality, not everyone else’s
"Would anyone like to guess what the right-wing reaction would be if liberal activists added pro-LGBTQ books to conservatives’ collections in the name of “choice”?"
Perhaps liberals should start doing that? Include a bookmark in each book explaining why.
In my neck of the woods, the LFL signaling is not limited to Christian fundies. The LFL selection for kids and teens seems to be okay, but the adult book donations give off a huge vibe of "I donated the book I think you ought to read" instead of "I donated a book I enjoyed." I see a lot of facepalming, 'oh, brother'-inducing trash...only a little of it Christian.
Or, maybe I'm being a curmudgeonly outlier about this. Maybe my neighbors really do like spending their summer pool time reading 20 different variants on '101 ways to be a better person' type books, rather than a wider variety of trashy fiction, biographies, histories, etc.
Kinda ironic in a way. Our LFLs are not filled with Christian self-righteous virtue signaling proselytization because of the all the non-Christian self-righteous virtue signaling proselytization that pushes it off the shelves. :)
This really makes me angry. I've been planning to build a little free library in front of my house, made to resemble the tower of the beautiful Central Library building in downtown Los Angeles where my dear wife worked as a Children's Librarian for 40+ years. Now it looks like I'll also have to install video cameras and a message to anyone like Meeks that her kind of behavior is NOT admirable or justifiable.
What Meeks is doing is just a small scale version of vigilante book banning. Book banners are motivated by fear, using a cowardly way to try to control what other people think. They're not trying to "protect children," they're trying to protect themselves from children seeing them for the ignorant, bigoted, mind bullies that they are.
it's shameful when people are so proud of, and open about, their ignorance. it is clear that this silly woman doesn't know what's in the bible. it's far more qualified to be banned than anything she has removed from those little libraries. she should go home and mind her own business.
Isn't there a verse or several in the babble about stealing ? It may be legal but certainly not moral to take books and not give them back or put them in another box.
I don't have something like this where I live but I am too much of a book hoarder to participate anyway.
So we have someone claiming they're swapping books out based on 'good Christian values' and therefore, it's okay.
Just for grins, let's attempt to take apart everything wrong with that sentence. First of all, in my experience, good Christian values are rarely good nor are they the unified list of values the phrase implies they are. Christians don't have one universal set of values, and all too often, they threaten to come to blows over which values are and aren't actually Christian. Then, there's the theft issue. These libraries (as Hemant noted) are intended to loan out books rather than give them away, so if you take a book and fail to return, that is stealing; just because local law enforcement isn't going to bother coming after you when you do it doesn't mean it's any less theft. Due specifically to the theft issue, it's clear that those Christian values above don't exactly align with local community values, which incidentally renders the idea of it being 'okay' invalid completely. I feel I must note here that replacing the stolen materials with other materials that align with the alleged Christian values in question is at this point little more than a propaganda attempt to make this whole scenario seem more palatable to the public.
In the interest of keeping this relatively short, I'm going to stop here. I have no doubt I've missed several things, but it's still painfully obvious that this woman is doing this for the sake of PR and power, and her husband is trying pretend she did nothing wrong. Note that it seems stealing hasn't quite yet been approved by Jesus, even if lying has long been on the acceptable list.
Brilliant move, as there is a critical shortage of Bibles in the state of Arkansas. Anyone who would do this, is too stupid to know any better by definition. As for that silent majority, they are neither silent, nor a majority. In fact, as a rule you can't get them to shut up.
"This is something the silent majority can do."
They are not the majority, and they sure as hell aren't silent. They are an extremely loud, vicious, and whiny minority.
Oh, brother. More territory-marking, more virtue-signaling, only this time with bibles. I'd ask if Ms. Meeks has any semblance of an idea of how JUVENILE she looks in doing this, when it's clear that she could never be bothered to be that introspective. Then, too, she also could never acknowledge that there are OTHER values than her Christian ones, and many of those are more inclusive and less judgmental.
Sadly, she's too busy showing EVERYONE what a good Christian she is to care.
You can’t add value to the libraries by stuffing it full of trash. She’s finding bibles and devotionals free in places that anyone can access, thrift stores can’t even bring themselves to asking money for the Bible’s fercrissakes, and replacing good books with worthless junk. That’s not adding value, or expanding choice. If someone wanted to borrow a Bible they can literally walk into any church anywhere, you know pretty much every corner a Starbucks doesn’t occupy, and ask for one. Hell you don’t even need to ask, they often have them in stacks by the door and all the tracts you can imagine. It isn’t like folks don’t have access to bibles or devotionals or whatever you are littering.
What isn’t readily available is the food, toiletries, reproductive care, naxolone, and positive literature for LGBT people, mostly because these things “don’t align with your Christian values” and your husband is interfering in access to these necessities in his role as lawmaker.
If you want a little free library to align with your Christian values, make one yourself. If you don’t like the literature in the little free libraries, don’t read it. But you do not get to decide for the rest of the community what literature they have access to.
She literally states that she’s swapping out the books. Does the husband understand how screen shots make a visible record that can’t be hidden?
She'll won't like it if someone put a Koran in one of those free libraries. Not to mention putting in a Jewish book about the Nazi holocaust, books about US slavery, books about evolution and science, books about atrocities committed by Christians, etc.
And ofc his wife doesn’t “want to discuss the matter”now that she’s been called out for her actions. Every accusation is an admission of guilt with conservatives in this country. We’d all be a lot better off if they’d worry more about state of their own lives & morality, not everyone else’s
Those organized leftist types do love books. I can confirm this from persona experience.
Are they okay? With all this pissing on things I worry about their state of hydration.
"Would anyone like to guess what the right-wing reaction would be if liberal activists added pro-LGBTQ books to conservatives’ collections in the name of “choice”?"
Perhaps liberals should start doing that? Include a bookmark in each book explaining why.
𝐼𝑡 𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝐹𝐿𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒’𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑎
In my neck of the woods, the LFL signaling is not limited to Christian fundies. The LFL selection for kids and teens seems to be okay, but the adult book donations give off a huge vibe of "I donated the book I think you ought to read" instead of "I donated a book I enjoyed." I see a lot of facepalming, 'oh, brother'-inducing trash...only a little of it Christian.
Or, maybe I'm being a curmudgeonly outlier about this. Maybe my neighbors really do like spending their summer pool time reading 20 different variants on '101 ways to be a better person' type books, rather than a wider variety of trashy fiction, biographies, histories, etc.
Kinda ironic in a way. Our LFLs are not filled with Christian self-righteous virtue signaling proselytization because of the all the non-Christian self-righteous virtue signaling proselytization that pushes it off the shelves. :)
This really makes me angry. I've been planning to build a little free library in front of my house, made to resemble the tower of the beautiful Central Library building in downtown Los Angeles where my dear wife worked as a Children's Librarian for 40+ years. Now it looks like I'll also have to install video cameras and a message to anyone like Meeks that her kind of behavior is NOT admirable or justifiable.
What Meeks is doing is just a small scale version of vigilante book banning. Book banners are motivated by fear, using a cowardly way to try to control what other people think. They're not trying to "protect children," they're trying to protect themselves from children seeing them for the ignorant, bigoted, mind bullies that they are.
it's shameful when people are so proud of, and open about, their ignorance. it is clear that this silly woman doesn't know what's in the bible. it's far more qualified to be banned than anything she has removed from those little libraries. she should go home and mind her own business.
Like COVID, these people are everywhere...
Isn't there a verse or several in the babble about stealing ? It may be legal but certainly not moral to take books and not give them back or put them in another box.
I don't have something like this where I live but I am too much of a book hoarder to participate anyway.
So we have someone claiming they're swapping books out based on 'good Christian values' and therefore, it's okay.
Just for grins, let's attempt to take apart everything wrong with that sentence. First of all, in my experience, good Christian values are rarely good nor are they the unified list of values the phrase implies they are. Christians don't have one universal set of values, and all too often, they threaten to come to blows over which values are and aren't actually Christian. Then, there's the theft issue. These libraries (as Hemant noted) are intended to loan out books rather than give them away, so if you take a book and fail to return, that is stealing; just because local law enforcement isn't going to bother coming after you when you do it doesn't mean it's any less theft. Due specifically to the theft issue, it's clear that those Christian values above don't exactly align with local community values, which incidentally renders the idea of it being 'okay' invalid completely. I feel I must note here that replacing the stolen materials with other materials that align with the alleged Christian values in question is at this point little more than a propaganda attempt to make this whole scenario seem more palatable to the public.
In the interest of keeping this relatively short, I'm going to stop here. I have no doubt I've missed several things, but it's still painfully obvious that this woman is doing this for the sake of PR and power, and her husband is trying pretend she did nothing wrong. Note that it seems stealing hasn't quite yet been approved by Jesus, even if lying has long been on the acceptable list.