Tarot Censorship - Portsmouth Herald

Access:NewAge Editorial

Who laughed when s/he read the subject of this message? Probably everyone. I did when I first heard about it. Well, it sounds a little absurd, doesn't it? Who would want to censor a discussion of Tarot card reading? Well, intolerance is a many-splendored thing. There are plenty of such people, even if they are (fortunately) statistically rare. Even the occasional outburst can be remarkably destructive.

If you doubt the need, IRL (In Real Life) and/or online, to defend the freedoms of speech and religion, or the rights to gather lawfully and associate freely in America today, the circumstances reported in this story should give you pause. A vocal religious minority has pressured the town of Seabrook, NH to threaten to close the public library rather than permit library-sponsored programs in Tarot reading and Numerology.

Enclosed below is a text transcript of the initial newsgroup report of this story. My partner, Clark Stillman, saw and re-published Mr Canfield's message. In case you don't have a browser handy, the text of that report follows.

Access: New Age Corporation intends to publicize and support Mr. Canfield's suggested response, and support the development of other international, Internet-based responses to such bigotry. As you read this, Looking Deeper will be adding a re-published Portsmouth Herald newspaper editorial on this situation. We invite, and will publish, additional material on this story as it is made available to us. We will prefer submissions in .html format files.

Censorship is dangerous to democratic society, whether IRL or on the net, just as the need to censor is dangerous and destructive to the individual. "Undesirable" is a tag that can be applied to all sorts of information and people. All sorts of zealots want to protect us from all sorts of information they deem "inappropriate" or "dangerous", and they act in various devious ways to abridge the freedoms of those whose views they decry. These people want to work in secret, or exert public pressure in local areas where local media can transform them from frogs into princes; from fringe groups into vocal and visible forces.

The net, by its very nature, reveals information and sheds light in dark corners. Most net-heads know intuitively that tolerating censorship in any area of information is the first step onto a slippery slope downward toward net censorship. We think it would be wonderfully appropriate if the Internet community intervened in this situation.

Dick Jones, Marketing Communications Director Access:NewAge Corp