America’s badge of honor for repressing thought is found with our rich history of banning books. As we are in the midst of Banned Book Week, I would like to take this time to nominate one of my favorite books, the Bible, as a book that should be banned. The four areas that get most books banned are issues involving politics, religion, sex and society. The Bible not only covers those topics, it has folks who have embraced the message and are causing harm in America and around the world.

Just like eating candy rots the teeth, promoters of banning subversive books have sought to ban books to avoid the degeneration of our moral fabric. Books can not only sully the soul they can foment revolution such as Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense. Of course, one man’s treason is another man’s freedom.

Aside from politics are the forbidden fruits of love, lust and passion. Society just can’t tolerate the secrecy of life blossoming into full view and possibly becoming accepted behavior. It must have been with great reluctance that the prose of D.H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley’s Lover was banned: