I'm not sure what the "or" is for. Acts of civil disobedience are generally illegal or close to it. This is theft and civil disobedience, though not one I agree with (nor do I think it would be particularly effective, tbh). But something being civil disobedience doesn't make it not illegal or not wrong it's just the reasoning behind doing it.
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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I think they are saying that civil disobedience is seperate from criminal disobedience. Which theft is criminal.
So protesting by standing on the sidewalk, civil disobedience; protesting in the middle of the street in a place with laws against, would be criminal disobedience.
In this case theft was clearly criminal.
This is the Reformation Church of Shelbyville, KY.
It sure would be a shame if the bibles they leave out every day went missing.
Those pews look pretty comfy too.
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The library will just bill them after a year. What idiots.
And then ban the people from the library.
they would find out if they could read
If they could read, they probably wouldn't be so bigoted and angry about books
Most libraries wolnt let you check out more if you have overdue books. Also fairly certain it dings your credit if they sell the debt.
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Shocked by this. The pastor seems like a great guy with totally normal opinions.
Sounds like they're this far --><-- away from honor killing their daughters.
What is with racists not understanding that their mixed race grandkids would probably look like their mixed race grandkids‽
Yeah.... totally stable genus
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Civil disobedience is a peaceful way to protest unfair laws when the regular methods of changing the law are too restricted or too slow to protect the civil rights of citizens. Civil disobedience in this case would be refusing to check out or read books that they find objectionable, if the government were to mandate that they be read.
You could make the argument that government is mandating this content if public schools assign it to students, but there is no real punishment under the law for rejecting a school assignment. It’s that they don’t want YOU to have access to this information, which is the opposite of civil disobedience: oppression. If the government were to mandate the removal of this content, as these citizens would like, the act of disobedience would be to read the books.
This is stealing from a public library.
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It's usually in the eye of the beholder I suppose. To this beholder I would say that civil disobedience implies resistance to an unjust law. Is this an unjust law? I don't see any. I don't even see a law they're objecting too. I see them trying to remove books because they hate people that are different from them. They want to erase people from existence they don't like. So no that's not civil disobedience. That's just the same horrendous despicable vile heinous hatred that these people do and have done for the better part of 2,000 years.
This would be a good charity that sees what books have been missing, buy them and just drop them in the library return box. Also, picket that church and dig into the pastor's dealings with their community. I bet they have secrets.
Just send a bill to the church for the books. If they don't pay, you sue them.
Charge them late fees and use the funds to buy more copies. Make them required to have a debit card on file in order to check out more if they have more than 5 late books.
I mean, the consequence is generally not being allowed to checkout more books.
It’s not even considered petty larceny.
It would be hilarious if you were able to sum everything up and roll it into a RICO or something. I just don’t think it would hold up.
Intent matters. Losing a book isn't theft. Checking one out with intent to keep it is. Normally this would be very hard to prove, in this case it's not.
And yeah, if one of the members of the congregation did this and then sold the books. And then donated that back to the church, the pastor could be charged for running a criminal syndicate which is a class c felony in Kentucky.
But I would be really surprised if a Kentucky jury would allow the charges to stick. Even if a DA was willing to try and prosecute
If you ever come across one of those Gideon bibles in a hotel or similar, do similar.
Gideons actually encourages people to take those bibles, giving away Bibles is kind of their whole schtick.
Sure, if enough people do it, maybe eventually the idiots donating to it will run out of money, but more likely they'd just think that what they're doing is working really well and use brag about it to get even more people to donate to them.
That's why you take it and throw it in the trash (somewhere else).
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