Assuming the Persona of the Opposition

Hey everyone, it’s Chelsea! Welcome back to my blog “Christian Mothers Against Literature”*. This week we’re going to be discussing the novel “IT” by Stephen King. When my little girl Rebecca came home from the 11th grade with this book in her back, I was immediately put off by the menacing font in which the title is printed; but I could never have imagined how vulgar this book truly is. It talks about demons, make-believe deities, suicide, premarital sex, polyamory, murder, homosexuality, and more. Within these 1300 pages, you can find every single sin and every single swear word imaginable to man; this novel is in no way appropriate for children— or for people of any age, really!
The biggest issue with the novel is the depiction of a group sex scene between the seven “losers”, which is supposedly meant to “seal their bond” and assure that they would all return to fight the demon in the future should it ever reappear. But the intention of the scene doesn’t matter— child porn is child porn. Even if they had been 7 consenting adults, an orgy is an orgy! It is so vile and unnecessary, it’s uncanny that anything so horrid could ever be dreamed up, written and/or published. It’s even more uncanny to consider the fact that this wretched display is only the tip of the very disturbing iceberg that is Stephen King’s “IT”. **
The next major problem with this text is the blasphemous depiction of good vs evil as a demon clown and an ancient turtle. Maturin the turtle is the guardian of peace and goodness in this ridiculous universe, and it’s revealed by Pennywise that he is long dead. It doesn’t take much interpretation on the readers part to determine that this is alluding to the idea that god is dead and the devil is among us— and this satanic theme is not one that should be presented to children or popularized in any form of media. These make believe deities are a direct attack on the church, and it’s extremely disquieting to a good Christian mother like myself.
Beyond that, the novel tries to humanize sins such as homosexuality or suicide by victimizing the people who partake in them and forcing the reader to empathize despite their choices. The normalization of these acts could potentially cause them to grow or spread, and God only knows what effect that would have on humanity. What chaos would ensue! King also curses like a sailor throughout the entirety of the novel; my eyes have never been exposed to such a vulgar text, from slurs to just swearing for the sake of it; you name the cuss word, it’s in the book. It’s simply inappropriate for young eyes, and that’s the end of it.
Overall, the novel “IT” by Stephen King is simply meaningless, vulgar horror for the sake of being scary. The unnecessary inclusion of blasphemous deities, polyamorous child porn, ridiculous amounts of cursing and unforgivable sins pushes the book over the edge and leaves no choice but to ban it. It is my firm belief as a mother and as a woman of God that no human being, especially children, should ever be exposed to such a vile text under any circumstances. I pray that it is removed from shelves so I may never worry about it falling into my poor daughter’s hands again. Thank you for reading, see you next week when we’ll be discussing “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

*disclaimer: this is in no way intended as an attack on Christianity, as I myself am Christian and so are the majority of people in my family. I simply made he post from the perspective of an over the top or radical Christian because upon researching the ban of the novel, this is exactly the kind of person who challenged the book in real life.
**disclaimer 2: despite the satirical nature of this blog post, I absolutely agree with the idea that the sex scene between the young losers was vile and unnecessary. It served no rhetorical purpose and came off as creepy and gross. The other two points I focused on, I brought up with a more humorous tone, but this one is actually genuinely disturbing and a valid argument against the book. I still don’t think it should be banned, but if there was ever a reason to ban a novel, I believe this would be it.