Defacing/Removing Flyers

[JMJ_coder]

Is it morally licit or even possibly obligatory to deface or remove (e.g., rip-up and throw in trash) things such as flyers from things such as public bulletin boards if said flyers promote immoral activities – say a meeting for abortion “rights”, or an anti-Catholic speaker is giving a lecture, etc.?

 

[Holly3278]

I don’t know but I have a similar question. Say that someone in the apartment complex where you live keeps putting out Protestant Gospel tracts. Would it be moral to throw them away so that no one gets deceived by the heretical theology within them?

 

[fermat]

You should leave them up and post your own information right next to it. Keep an eye out to see if anyone rips your information down and then challenge them on it. If nothing else, give people a choice.

If you can, try and get some of the ‘Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth’ booklets from the store here. I always keep some in the house from when the lds or JW’s come by. Sometimes they even take it.

Leave those (or something similar out) and see what happens.

 

[Newbie2]

I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with other people’s stuff. With the Protestant thing, you never know if a Protestant church is a stepping stone from atheism to the RCC.

I like the idea of giving people a choice.

In stored, I routinely turn around magazines with offensive covers. Not quite the same thing, but it’s not destroying anyone else’s property.

 

[Mattapoisett64]

I basically agree that it’s not a good idea to remove others’ materials, but that said, I would have a tough time leaving Jack Chick’s anti-Catholic pamphlets alone. They’re so bad that they almost fall into a special category – somewhere between bizzarely funny and outright libelous.