Harry Potter is causing school shootings, claims mother

I will say once again: if the Harry Potter books weren't so popular, these kinds of people wouldn't be paying them any mind. Deep down, these people are happy that there is something like Harry Potter to kick around. Twenty years ago it was Dungeons & Dragons. Then it was Pokemon. Today it's the Potter books and five years from now it'll be something else. These people are in it for the attention and they'll say anything stupid to get it. Here's the latest story of anti-Harry hysteria from the Daily Mail...

'Ban Harry Potter or face more school shootings'

Last updated at 13:20pm on 4th October 2006

A woman who maintains that the Harry Potter books are an attempt to teach children witchcraft is pushing for the second time to have them banned from school libraries.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four from the Atlanta suburb of Loganville, told a Georgia Board of Education officer that the books by British author J.K. Rowling, sought to indoctrinate children as Wiccans, or practitioners of religious witchcraft.

Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil - as she claims the Potter ones do - help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen.

That would not happen if students instead read the Bible, Mallory said.

She added that the books were harmful to children who are unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

The children, she said, try to imitate Harry Potter and cast spells on classmates.

"They're not educationally suitable and have been shown to be harmful to some kids," Mallory said.

She argued that teachers do not assign other religious books like the Bible as student reading.

It was Mallory's second public campaign against the popular fiction series, after trying to get her son's elementary school to ban the books in August 2005.

Victoria Sweeny, an attorney representing the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Atlanta's eastern suburbs, which had ruled against her in May, said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban mainstays like "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."

"There's a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don't support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.

Sweeny said parents, teachers and scholars have found them a good tool to stimulate children's imagination and encourage them to read.

The hearing officer presiding over the appeal will make a recommendation to the state board, which will then decide the case at its meeting in December.

Mallory is appealing after the Gwinnett County school board ruled in favour of the books.

Wiccans consider themselves witches, pagans or neo-pagans, and say their religion is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.

This woman is positively nuts! Everything she is claiming about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books is a bold-faced lie... and she's using the name of God to perpetrate it.

I'll leave with this thought to ponder: people like Laura Mallory will no more understand the Holy Bible than they will the Harry Potter books. And when it all gets boiled down, Mallory is approaching the Bible as a "magic spellbook" even more than she thinks the Potter novels are.