censorship

Here’s my rant of the week. I get so annoyed by people who think they know all about censorship. The following is an account of one of my coworkers, so I really can’t verify the truthfulness of it, but I’ll respond to her story as if it is all correct.

My coworker went to Deseret Industries (a thrift store run by the LDS church) this weekend. She said she was surprised to find the bookshelves nearly empty, so she asked someone about it.

She said that the store manager told her that many of the books contained inappropriate content, and they weren’t going to sell them.

My coworker then asked if they were taking the books out back to burn them. (I’ll pause here and say that my coworker knows I am LDS, so I wonder why she would say such insulting things about my church to my face.)

She said that the manager simply responded that the books were inappropriate and wouldn’t be sold.

Her response to me? “What’s next? Are they going refuse to sell clothing that’s a little ‘provocative’?!!!”

Well, knowing the standards of my church, YES! That’s exactly the kind of thing they won’t sell. And you know what? They have every right to choose what they sell in their store, because it’s a private company. They aren’t the library. Their objective isn’t to provide unbiased information and knowledge to the world. I’m not the expert on D.I., but I would say their objective is to provide training to help employees find steady, long-term employment while at the same time providing clean, low-priced items to those in need.

D.I. and any other store has the right to sell or not sell anything they please. It gets on my nerves when people get up in arms about censorship in a situation like this. It makes no sense. If you don’t like what a store is selling (or not selling), don’t shop there! Go buy your trashy novels elsewhere and don’t expect a church run store to sell stuff it considers inappropriate. It isn’t obligated to.

Okay. I'm done now. Thanks for listening.