CarolC penned:" Yeah... I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one C.S. It's when you ignore them that they do the most harm. And I've got the court records to prove it".

I reply: I suppose the biggest difference is that you were one person being picked on, not what now amounts to a highly visible corporation. HP is something tremendously popular. The fundies are about as likely to do away with HP books and films as those against fundies will do away with Christianity. It's just too known and popular a thing for them to make any impact. I would agree that in circumstances like yours, it's necessary that the information be made available to the public so that they can react. In this case, no one needs to be too worried that the public will know. I've seen websites that list info down to Harrys shoe size. ;D

And Joe Offer offered: I suppose, though, that it might be good to take a look at the issue from the other side. Are the people who protest Harry Potter really the self-righteous bigots we think they are, or could it be that they are truly afraid of the aspect of the books that they term "occult"? If people are truly afraid of something, do we have an obligation to respect that fear, or at least to accommodate it in some way?

I reply: Absolutely! And the way we can respect and accomodate them is to allow them *not* to read the books, or go to the movie. That's democracy in action...vote with your feet. For them to try to ban the books altogether, or to try to shut the film down is their trying to impose their interpetations on everyone else.

Joe also said: I have a fear of my children being exposed to fundamentalist teaching, and I expect the fundamentalists to accommodate my fear and not expose my kids to their teachings in school. How about the opposite? How do we live peacefully in a society where so many people are so sensitive about so many different things?

I reply: The only way for it to be fair (here in the US)is this: Everything is allowed, or nothing at all. You can't allow bible study and not a pagan studies group. You can't allow "Drawing Down the Moon" on the bookshelves and not the Bible. And dare I say? Can you rightly teach evolution (which still has to be called a theory, as it has not been absolutely proven) and not creationism (also a theory)?

Either it all goes or it all stays.

The thing here in the states is this: The "Seperation of Church and State" was meant to keep the State out of religion, not the other way around, and in the instances where it *is* interpeted erroneously (and someone knows enough to get a decent lawyer), it will lose. Jay Seculo of the "American Centers for Law and Justice" has won many cases that have involved the invoking of the "Church and State" thing where it invloves such situations (religion meshing with the State...i.e.: a church group trying to rent a public hall for religious purposes, or a kid wanting to say something religious in his graduation speech, both of which are legal according to the way our constitution is currently written).

If we here in the US want that changed to go both ways, that's alright...but we need to alter it legally, not try to use text that was written one way to mean the opposite.