“Let the children come to me,” Jesus says in the Bible, but parents and instructors in Utah have chosen that they will have to wait until high school.
The collection of Christian scripture has been shelved for pupils in the Davis School District, situated north of Salt Lake City, until they reach high school.
After receiving a petition to prohibit the holy book owing to its depictions of sex and violence, the district withdrew it from elementary and middle school libraries.
The Bible ban is not the first of its sort; after 2022 state legislation obliged schools to take into account parents’ opinions on age-appropriate materials, Utah schools started removing other volumes from libraries.
The Book of Mormon, a sacred scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the district’s next holy book to be evaluated.
On December 11, the David School District received a petition from a parent requesting that the Bible be removed from classrooms because it was deemed a “sex-ridden” book.
The parent’s petition for a review of the Bible was made public in March 2022, with the parent’s name and address redacted.
The anonymous parent appears to parody Utah Parents United, a conservative parent movement that tried to remove improperly sexual novels from school libraries, in the petition.
Within the first five months of the law’s implementation, parents submitted over 250 complaints requesting that specific books be removed from classrooms.
“Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: the Bible. You’ll no doubt find that the Bible has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition,” the petition said.
This lawsuit was filed in response to Utah’s “Sensitive Materials in Schools” statute, which was passed in May and outlaws some sensitive instructional materials that involve explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy, or fondling.”
“Get this porn out of our schools,” the parent wrote, accompanied by an eight-page list of “offensive” Bible verses. “If the books that have been banned thus far are any indication, this should be a slam dunk.”
The school district did not explain why it banned the Bible, nor did it specify which sections were the determining factor in its removal.
Davis School District has around 72,000 pupils in all grades.
- Will Smith Revels in Jada Pinkett Smith’s Bestselling Book: ‘Congrats, Mama!’
Will Smith is pleased with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s […] More - Paris Hilton Opens Up About Her Emotional Distress Following Hurtful Comments Regarding Her Son’s Head
Paris Hilton has expressed her sadness regarding the response to […] More - Will Smith describes his marriage to Jada as a “sloppy public experiment in unconditional love” during a book talk
Will Smith made a public appearance alongside his wife, Jada […] More
