Would you want to see a book challenegd or banned if it criticized or attacked the death penalty?

Question

In a non-fiction book of this nature, the author would examine how states that use this form of punishment use it unjustly, putting innocent civilians to death while refusing to accept whatever evidence of their innocence that may come up, even using the "race card" to justify their means, and prosectuors who deny ever putting an innocent man to death.

In a fiction book, you would have a wife and mother as your protagonist, whose husband is charged for killing a teenage girl. She stands by her man despite evidence of his guilt piling up in court, he is eventually found guilty and sentence to die in the electric chair. Afterwards, she becomes depressed and angry, and takesher feelings out on the murder victim's family, saying she got what she deserved when her husband killed her, even sabatoging a memorial get-together for friends and family on the anniversary of the girl's death. The widowed woman eventaully uses the electric chair to attempt suicide.

OR, for another fiction book, same situation as above, only this novel is in the viewpoint of a young child (aged 10 or 11) whose doting widowed father is arrested and charged with the murder of his child's friend's abusive parents (he uses defending the children as a motive for murder.) When the father is found guilty and sentenced to death, the child is horrified and upset, despite being placed with a kindly police family. After the father is executed, the protagonist goes into serious depression, acts out of control, screaming and crying for his/her father, and attempts suicide around maybe six times, one of the attempts would be drowning himself/herself in the foster family's swimming pool to where the attempt is nearly successful.

By the way, I don't think I could write either of these plots... I'd sound a bit too preachy, and there would be a lot of legal stuff to which I have no knowledge... LOL!

Answer 1

I don't think any books should be banned-no matter who's offended by it or not. That's all opinions, and we still are allowed(somewhat anyway lol) in the US to freedom of speech, and we're all entitled to our own opinons. If you don't like it, don't read it. Or better yet, write your own book countering what you disagreed with. I get so disgusted when these parents push to have books banned from libraries. Last one I heard about was in Miami I believe, Cuban parents were ticked about a book that talked about life in Cuba. The parents said it gave the wrong idea of what it was like in Cuba. Again, that's all opinions, need to teach your kids the right way about life, and let them form their own opinions.....

Answer 2

Yes - it is a fact that sometimes the legal system gets it wrong. Since 1973 in the U.S. alone, 140 people have been released from death row because they were exonerated by DNA and other evidence. These are ALL people who were found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Unfortunately, DNA evidence is not available in most homicide cases. So, as long as the death penalty is in place, you are pretty much GUARANTEED to occasionally execute an innocent person. That alone is reason enough to oppose capital punishment, but there are many others: - Cost - because of the legal apparatus designed to minimize wrongful executions (and the enormous expense of maintaining death row facilities), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute someone than to imprison them for life. - As you mentioned, it is not a deterrent - violent crime rates are consistently HIGHER in death penalty jurisdictions. - It is inconsistently and arbitrarily applied. - Because the U.S. is one of the last remaining nations with capital punishment, many other countries refuse to extradite known criminals who should be standing trial here. - It fosters a culture of violence by asserting that killing is an acceptable solution to a problem. - Jesus was against it (see Matthew 5:7 & 5:38-39, James 4:12, Romans 12:17-21, John 8:7, and James 1:20). - Life without parole (LWOP) is on the books in most states now (all except Alaska), and it means what it says. People who get this sentence are taken off the streets. For good. - As Voltaire once wrote, "let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson." - Whether you’re a hardened criminal or a government representing the people, killing an unarmed human being is wrong. Period. “He did it first” is not a valid excuse.

Answer 3

No book should be challenged or banned for it's content.

However, your non-fiction book is far too biased and your fiction book has a ridiculous plot line.

I would read neither.

Answer 4

I don't believe in the banning of books, and I think the death penalty is completely disgusting. So...no.

Answer 5

Funny you should mention this. I teach a class on Critical Reading, and my students' assignment over the weekend is to write arguments for both the pro-banning and anti-banning points of view:
Personally, I don't think any book should be banned, but here's a very good article on "challenging" that
I also agree with:

"Banned Books Week 1997: A Case of Misrepresentation by Steve McKinzie, the Social Sciences Librarian at Dickinson College

This week (September 21st-27th), the nation celebrates National Banned Book Week, a week-long propaganda fest and consciousness-raising gala of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. The week's promoters parade a list of books they charge have been banned in libraries and schools across the nation, talk about the importance of First Amendment Rights, and lament the rise of censorship from what they consider to be the ill-informed and malicious enemies of freedom and American democracy -- a group that includes the usual conservatives of various flavors and, of course, that enemy of everything dear to the national consciousness, the Christian Right.
Now to begin with, most Americans have serious problems with the sort of radical libertarianism that the American Library Association (ALA) espouses. Most Americans don't buy into the notion that public libraries should buy anything no matter how pornographic, or that schools should teach anything, no matter how controversial. The majority of Americans believe in community standards, and they stubbornly insist that schools, libraries, and other social institutions ought to support those standards. Even so, the real difficulty with the American Library Association's Banned Book week isn't its philosophy, however much people may question the ALA's anything-goes-approach to building a library collection and managing a school's curriculum.
No, the real problem is the dishonesty involved.
Banned Book Week isn't really what it says it is. The ALA has gone in for some serious mislabeling here. It has misleadingly categorized the week -- a serious charge when you remember that librarians are supposed to be dispassionate and accurate catalogers or labelers of things.
In all honesty, what is the real state of censorship and book banning in America? Well, very few -- if any -- books in this country are currently banned. You can buy almost any title that you want, download tons of information from the Web that you need, and you can check out all sorts of things at your public library. Nor is censorship dangerously on the rise as the ALA is apt to insinuate.
The disparity between what actually is and what the week's promoters claim stems from their exaggerated notions of what constitutes censorship. In the eyes of the ALA and its Office for Intellectual Freedom, any kind of challenge to a book is to be considered an effort at banning and any kind of complaint about a title an attempt at unconscionable censorship. For a book to be labeled a banned book in their mind, someone needs only question its place in a given library's collection, or openly wonder if a specific title belongs in the children's section. To be reckoned a censor, one has only to suggest in public that a book may not be appropriate in a given high school English class.
Kathy Monteiro, a teacher in McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona complained about her high schoolers' mandatory reading of Huckleberry Finn. She thought the book was racist. Parents in High Point, North Carolina questioned the appropriateness of Richard Wright's Native Son and Alice Walker's Color Purple. They thought the adult themes inappropriate for the grade level. Both these protests were officially recorded as examples of attempted censorship by ALA's Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom. All three titles were placed on the Banned Book List.


Let's get real. Such challenges are not attempts at censorship, and such complaints about books used in a classroom are not efforts to have certain titles banned. The people involved in these controversies about what students are required to read are merely speaking their minds, and no matter how much I disagree with their contentions, (I enjoy anything by Mark Twain and think Richard Wright's Native Son to be something of a classic) they have a right to argue their point. They should be able to speak up without fear of being considered enemies of the Republic or being chastised as censors of great literature.
Parents who challenge the inclusion of a given text in a specific literature class and citizens who openly protest a library's collection development decision are only speaking out about things that they believe in. It is a grand America tradition and one that we should encourage as much as we can. We shouldn't be trying to ban free speech in the name of free speech. Let people speak out about what they care about, without being branded a censor or labeled a book banner.
In short, the American Library Association needs to lighten up. At the very least, they should rename their week. As anyone can see, Banned Book Week isn't really about banned books. It is about people having differing opinions and caring enough to make those opinions known. The nation could use a lot more of that, not less."

So, keep up the challenges, but no banning, please.

Answer 6

Neither of those books should be banned.

Answer 7

Wow. I probably wouldn't read it, but you should have the right to publish it.

Answer 8

what are u talking about ???