A Utah school district in the US has banned the use of the Bible for elementary and middle school students after being described as too vulgar or violent.
According to a report from Daily Mail, some parents of these students grew agitated and demanded that the bible be banned in that part of the district as it was too vulgar for its readers.
As a result of the pressure from parents of these students, the officials in the Davis district, a 72,000-student district north of Salt Lake City have been forced to ban the reading of the bible in the district.
Before banning the bible in the district, a committee made up of parents, teachers, and administrators accessed the good book before the action was taken.
According to the district spokesperson Chris Williams, the Book of Mormon has also been removed from younger students’ libraries after someone filed a review request for the Book of Mormon to be removed as well.
The district has removed other titles, including Sherman Alexie´s ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian’ and John Green´s ‘Looking for Alaska,’ following a 2022 state law requiring districts to include parents in decisions over what constitutes ‘sensitive material.’
The committee published its decision about the Bible in an online database of review requests and did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages it found overly violent or vulgar.
The decision comes as conservative parent activists, including state-based chapters of the group Parents United, descend on school boards and statehouses throughout the United States, sowing alarm about how sex and violence are talked about in schools.
Because of the district’s privacy policy, it´s unknown who made the request for the Bible to be banned from Davis schools or if they are affiliated with any larger group.
A copy of the complaint obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through a public records request shows that the parent noted the Bible contains instances of incest, prostitution, and rape. The complaint derided a ‘bad faith process’ and said the district was ‘ceding our children´s education, First Amendment Rights, and library access’ to Parents United.
‘Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible,’ the parent´s complaint, dated Dec. 11, said. It later went on to add, ‘You´ll no doubt find that the Bible (under state law) has `no serious values for minors´ because it´s pornographic by our new definition.’
The review committee determined the Bible didn´t qualify under Utah’s definition of what’s pornographic or indecent, which is why it remains in high schools, Williams said. The committee can make its own decisions under the new 2022 state law and has applied different standards based on students´ ages in response to multiple challenges, he said.
