There’s a guy on campus who stands around with signs that say things like “God hates sin!” and “Repent or perish” with accompanying ham-fisted Bible citations. Yesterday he was outside the university library droning at people.

To begin with, I disapprove of more or less every sentence that begins “God hates”, because I firmly believe that focusing on hatred is like, exactly not God’s thing. If God is love, it follows that hatred would be not really what God’s into. Furthermore, there are so many things to do that focus on love that doing hate-focused things strikes me as deliberately pig-headed and wrong.

Now imagine if someone who’s been seriously hurt by a Christian group, like a person who’s had their rape dismissed by a pastor, or been sent to pray-away-the-gay camp saw that guy when they were on their way to the library. Those signs could drive someone away from the library.

It is deeply, deeply wrong to drive people away from the library. The library exists to connect people to information and knowledge. As it is wrong to deny God’s love to anyone, it is wrong to deny Humankind’s knowledge to anyone. The Light is in all people, and our works done, knowledge sought, and attempts to learn, improve, and understand are held in the library as much as in the hearts of people. To restrict access to information is to hobble our ability to develop empathy, learn about the world, learn about God, see the Light in others throughout history, and soothe the wounds done by the Darkness.

Censorship of all kinds is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I can’t stop fretting over sign-guy and the library. I don’t know how to counteract this badness. Any ideas, y’all?