The Trouble With Harry Potter - religious cults and sects

For almost three years, Harry Potter books have topped both best-seller lists and the American Library Association's list of challenged and banned books.
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Does exposure to Harry Potter harm children? That's the question posited by a new website that examines the controversy swirling around the series, which narrates the adventures of a nerdly outcast whose life does a 180 after he's admitted into "Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Kidspeak

teaches kids about censorship and fighting for freedom of expression, using the fictional boy wizard as a case study.
"You couldn't ask for a better poster child against censorship than Harry Potter," said Chris Finan, the president of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

, which sponsors the site with several other anti-censorship groups.

Kidspeak publishes news of censorship campaigns done in the name of children and instructs kids how to defend their First Amendment rights. The website was formerly called "Muggles (Humans) for Harry Potter," but was changed to reflect the broader anti-censorship content.

It all began with a memo

sent out by a school superintendent in Zeeland, Michigan, restricting the Harry Potter books in the town's schools.
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The protest worked in Zeeland, and the school district reversed almost all of the superintendent's directives. Over 18,000 kids across the country ended up becoming members of the site to fight censorship at their schools.

But the storybook sorcerer-in-training is still seen as the anti-Christ in conservative enclaves across the country.
"Harry Potter is saying you can dabble in witchcraft as long as it's entertaining," said Beverly Green, a Sunday school teacher from Eastman, Georgia, and mother of three. "If it's not good, it's evil. There ain't no in between. When you start dabbling in demonic spirits, that's dangerous ground. You're opening up your home, yourself to all kinds of attacks from the Devil."

Green's charge -– that the series trivializes the battle between good and evil -– is frequently cited by Harry Potter critics.
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Critics in Florida even produced their own Harry Potter video: Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged -– Making Evil Look Innocent

, sold online for $24.95.

"There's something to offend everybody," said Beverley Becker, the associate director for the office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association. "If someone doesn't like a book, they don't need to read it. And they don't need to set the reading agenda for an entire community either."

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