This book was written in 1886 and was found offensive today. Please, aren't there enough current topics to cause them to be offended?


Sherlock Holmes Banned from Reading Lists for Being Anti-Mormon

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have appealed to generations -- but on Thursday the Albemarle County School Board in Virgina voted to remove the detective's A Study in Scarlet from sixth-grade reading lists, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reports, because it is, as the board reported, age-inappropriate. But as the Los Angeles Times notes, "The two gory murders weren't the problem. The trouble was the way the book portrays Mormonism."

The case against Sherlock Holmes began with the parent of a Henley Middle School student challenging the book in May on grounds that it was derogatory toward Mormons. The parent, Brette Stevenson, said, "A Study in Scarlet has been used to introduce students to the mystery genre and into the character of Sherlock Holmes. This is our young students’ first inaccurate introduction to an American religion.” Ultimately the school board agreed and it was deemed inappropriate for the age group, but it will be available for older students.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, the mystery revolves around a corpse found at a derelict house in England with the word "RACHE" scrawled in blood on the wall beside the body. In the second part of the story, it flashes back to 1847 Utah, where a man named John Ferrier and a little girl named Lucy, near death from dehydration, are discovered by a large party of Mormons, led by Brigham Young, who rescue them on the condition that they adopt the Mormon faith. USA Today tries to pick out some of the controversial passages:

(John Ferrier) had always determined, deep down in his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point he was inflexible. He had to seal his mouth on the subject, however, for to express an unorthodox opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in the Land of the Saints.
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It's attracted controversy before. According to a 1994 Salt Lake Tribune article, when Doyle visited Utah in 1923, he was asked (via letter) about his depiction of the Latter Day Saints' organization as being "steeped in the assassination of apostates, and that polygamy was white slavery" and so forth:

Sir Arthur responded that in the future he would write of the Latter-day Saints as he found them on his visit. But, he insisted, "all I said about the Danite Band and the murders is historical so I cannot withdraw that tho[sic] it is likely that in a work of fiction it is stated more luridly than in a work of history. It's best to let the matter rest." That and his praise of the pioneers was as close as he would come to a public apology.
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Not everyone was happy about the removal of the book from sixth grade reading lists. Apparently "more than 20 former Henley students turned out to oppose the book’s removal from the lists."

Rising Western Albemarle High School ninth-grader Quinn Legallo-Malone spoke during public comment to oppose removal of the book. He called the work “the best book I have read so far... I was capable of reading it in sixth grade. I think it was a good challenge. I’m upset that they’re removing it.”
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The parent who led the censorship challenge, on the other hand, was pleased. “I think the process worked,” she said to the Daily Progress. We wonder what Holmes would have made of this.

 

I live in Virginia. Trust me when I say that people here never have enough to bitch and complain about. It never ends!

Vehicle property taxes were the main complaint, but now people are looking for other things to lash out against,

 

6th grade huh....yepper why read about it when you can watch it on HBO...

 

Wasn't Holmes also a massive drug addict?

[YOUTUBE]2npPQEE9vOk[/YOUTUBE]
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There is the thought that he was drug addict, but this complaint was the way Mormons were depicted in a flashback scene of the book. God forbid they complain about drug use. Let's complain about the way something was written over 100 years ago.

 

I personally felt that books weren't mature enough for students, early on. By the time our classes were discovering Poe, I had already progressed to Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Thoreau. I wasn't challenged in school and feel like I suffered for it.

 

well if it is banned might be the only way to get a 6th grader to even read it...

 

by the time my classmates where reading Poe I was reading The Carpetbaggers and Tropic of Cancer.....

Why read Sherlock Homes when You have Mickey Spillane?...

 

Banning worked for Catcher in the Rye.

 

And "Lady Chatterley's Lover". Its an author's dream come true.


Well, maybe not for someone like Salman Rushdie....

 

Many of the great minds did cocaine or some other drug. Einstein, Freud,
The Beatles, Coleridge, Crowley, Dickens, Edison, Franklin, Gingrich, Picasso, Poe, Van Gogh.

Can every author, scientist and philosopher have their works be banned from learning institutions worldwide for having partaken in mind altering substances?

 

Just say no, kids.

 

Sherlock Holmes was banned for being anti Mormon, not for its character being a drug addict. Bringing up that point when it has little to do with the issue at hand is antithetical.

I'd expect you to at least bring an article to the table being either in favor or against Mormonism, either present day or of times passed.

 

Fucking Mormons.

 

Chill girl. Obviously those proposing the ban are idiots. I was just having a lil' fun.

I'm gonna play that "Holmes is High" clip again...

 

What makes you think I'm a girl?

Obviously, those proposing that I am are idiots.

 

Could it be that cute litle avatar of yours?...

 

my mistake.

 

Initially, no. Doyle started introducing his drug use in an (unsuccessful) attempt to make Holmes less popular; a process which culminated in him finally and definitively killing Holmes off altogether, and then being forced to bring him back to life because he was being hounded into misery by the general public.

As Doyle pointed out in the earlier quoted interview, while his depictions of Mormon behaviour of the times was excessively lurid, that they went around assassinating apostates is not in dispute, and never was.

This ban has nothing to do with portraying Mormons inaccurately; only in portraying them negatively. Charles Manson worshippers could argue the same case and have all biographies of the guy banned if they make him out to be evil.

 

Well, they did knock down the dimensions of avatars...:excited: