Utah School District Bans the Bible

One angry parent used the trend of book banning to make a statement

The BiblePhoto byAaron BurdenonUnsplash

Conservative leaders and groups throughout the country have embraced book banning as a way to control the narrative on certain controversial topics such as racism and LGBTQ issues. They've spoken at length about "lewd and lascivious" materials being on the shelves of the children's schools. They've raised hell at school board meetings.

Now, one parent took a look at the Bible and realized that it was riddled with ideas that conservatives were supposedly trying to prevent in the classroom. A Utah school district sided with the parent and is disallowing elementary and middle school students from having access to the Bible in school, after deeming that its "vulgarity and violence" were inappropriate for those children.

This parent is actually against book bans and wanted to expose their "bad faith process." The Davis School District — the state's second biggest public system with nearly 74,000 pre-K-to-12th grade students — has largely removed the book from classroom and library shelves, but kept it in high school libraries.

The parent, in a copy of the complaint obtained by NBC News that protects their identity, said their effort to remove the Bible from circulation in the school district was in protest of a 2022 Utah law that made it easier to remove “pornographic or indecent” content from schools. The legislation was supported by conservative activist groups, including Utah Parents United.

"I thank the Utah Legislature and Utah Parents United for making this bad faith process so much easier and way more efficient," the parent said in the complaint. "Now we can all ban books and you don’t even need to read them or be accurate about it. Heck, you don’t even need to see the book!"

An eight-page list describing questionable material in the Bible, including direct quotes from scripture, was included in the complaint.

"Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide," the parent wrote. "You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition."

“Get this PORN out of our schools,” the parent wrote. “If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk.”

The committee decided to "retain the book in school library circulation only at the high school level based on age appropriateness due to vulgarity or violence," according to a statement to NBC News on Friday from Christopher Williams, a spokesperson for the district.

Christopher Williams also told The Salt Lake Tribune that a review committee found the Good Book “does not contain sensitive material” as defined by the Utah code referenced in the request, but still restricted it to only older students anyway.

It's believed only seven or eight libraries in the district's elementary and middle schools even had the Bible available for students to read and the book is not part of any school curriculum, Williams added.

After Utah passed the new law, the state’s board of education was swamped with hundreds of complaints from parents, and over 80 books were taken out of school libraries and classrooms. Many of the books focused on themes of race and LGBTQ+ identity, such as Gender Queer and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, both of which have been banned from school libraries.

Another parent in support of having the Bible in schools has appealed the committee's ban. It is their hope that they may get the decision reversed and that the Bible will return for children of all ages.

Nothing will be decided over the school's summer vacation. They return to school on August 17th, 2023.

According to the American Library Association (ALA), the effort to ban, limit or restrict books at libraries and other public settings is on the rise. "ALA opposes censorship of any materials that meet the information needs of a community’s members, including students," Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in a statement this week.

"The use of Utah’s 'sensitive materials' law to remove this book and other books demonstrates how efforts to suppress and censor library materials narrows educational opportunities and harms students’ access to information," according to Caldwell-Stone.  

"The curation of library collections for young people should not be left to politicians and advocacy groups who place politics above young peoples’ education needs."