Plan Would Limit Prison Chapel Books

[Strong Atheist]

<snip>

A broad swath of religious organizations and civil liberties groups — often on opposite sides of contentious issues — have joined together to condemn a proposed rule that they say would prohibit some religious texts in federal penitentiary libraries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/us/18prison.html?_r=1&ref=us

[Historic NY]

1. Boy, the Gideons aren't going to like this.

[baldguy]

2. I wonder which idiot Bush appointee came up with this one?

The Bureau of Prisons in January proposed that “materials that could incite, promote, or otherwise suggest the commission of violence or criminal activity” may be excluded from chapel libraries. The word “could” is at the center of a two-year dispute between the agency and these groups over which religious texts should be banned from prison libraries.

That's the entire Bible, and the entire Torah, and the entire Koran.

[laconicsax]

4. *psst* the entire Bible includes the entire Torah

[Igel]

3. Yes, it would prohibit "some religious texts".

Then they argue that it could prohibit most or all religious texts, and therefore is a bad rule. Typical slippery-slope argument made out of fear for their own texts (or vaguely absolutist principles, in the case of the ACLU) without regard for what the materials that *would* be banned are.

I remember the debate back in 2004 and '05. I thought the ban was a done deal back then.