Any book dealing with an issue that is considered immoral will face conflicts of opinion when released into a society. It comes to no surprise to me that as soon as The Scarlet Letter was published the church attacked it as "dirty" and "immoral". It seems like religious leaders condemn any art that portrays a religious figure doing something immoral. The negative opposition from clergymen did not have much affect when the book was released, both because they did not provide strong arguments and because Hawthorne's writing is too sophisticated to be thrown aside as "dirty". .
The complaints filed against this book as part of the school curriculum did not start for nearly a century after it was released. This provided time for the book to become so strongly ingrained in our society that it became a part of American history, custom, and tradition. It gave an image of colonial America that truly exposed the hardships that the colonists faced. The arguments for the banning of the book were never strong enough to be supported anyway. I found it interesting that one parent condemned the book for use of 4-letter words, even though it doesn't use bad language. Why would a parent push for the removal of a book from a school library if she hadn't even bothered to see if it really was obscene?.
Most of the people that condemn The Scarlet Letter seem ignorant. Ignorant to the fact that a student can only see why something is right or wrong when they see both sides of the argument. A lot of the complaints point out that the book deals with adultery. I don't see why that is a reason to remove it from the school. If you expect a student to just know about issues like adultery, sex, drugs, and racism without any school involvement, .
then we have to find our information from outside sources, and who knows how truth-based those sources may be. .