Last week, Utah’s Davis School District, located north of Salt Lake City, banned the Holy Bible from middle and elementary school libraries. They are currently considering a motion to similarly ban the Book of Mormon. Yesterday, the district was flooded with outraged parents and Republican lawmakers carrying Bibles and demanding that the district reverse course. The district’s decision had supposedly been made under a law passed in Utah two years ago allowing for the review and removal of reading material containing “sensitive” or pornographic content. Critics argue that the move was made out of spite and that the Bible does not qualify for such a review under the state statute. (AP)
Republican lawmakers rallied with more than one hundred Bible-toting parents and children at Utah’s Capitol on Wednesday to protest a suburban school district’s decision to remove the Bible from middle and elementary school libraries in the wake of a GOP-backed “sensitive materials” law passed two years ago.
Concerned parents and children holding signs that read “The Bible is the original textbook” and “Remove porn, not the Bible,” said they were outraged after northern Utah’s Davis School District announced that a review committee concluded the Bible was too “violent or vulgar” for young children. The committee ruled that it did not qualify as obscene or pornographic under the sensitive materials law, but used its own discretion to remove it from libraries below the high school level.
Some anonymous person in the Davis school district had requested the removal of the Bible because they objected to other books that had been removed. That material contained sexual material and the promotion of transgender ideology.
The school board admitted that the Bible does not qualify as pornography under the statute. But they noted that is does contain references to “incest, prostitution and rape.” That’s absolutely true. The Bible also contains graphic descriptions of battles during wars, slavery, and people committing nearly every sin imaginable. But all of that material is in there not just as a historical record, but to teach people lessons and offer a path to salvation. Whether you happen to be personally religious or not, it’s an informative read.
But even admitting all of that, the Bible is not pornography. It doesn’t contain cartoons of young boys performing sex acts on each other or guides on how to achieve the best orgasms, as some of the material that was removed did. We can debate the core definition of pornography all day long if you wish, but sometimes you’re left with little more than the “you know it when you see it” rule. And the last thing we need is written material in elementary school libraries further spreading the social contagion of gender confusion to children who may not even be considering the question.
One other thing they should be checking is how access to computers and cell phones is controlled in the elementary schools in the district. Are there any safeguards in place? It’s far too easy to access pornography on the web, and kids today are often far more adept at navigating the internet than some of their parents.
Utah is already considering making a change to the law. The new version might not specifically shield the Bible from removal, but it could require elected officials to oversee the passage of new school regulations instead of having them created by school board members at closed hearings.
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