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Utah primary schools ban Bible for ‘vulgarity and violence’
- By Max Matza
- BBC News
3 June 2023
A school district in the US state of Utah has removed the Bible from elementary and middle schools for containing “vulgarity and violence”.
The move follows a complaint from a parent that the King James Bible has material unsuitable for children.
Utah’s Republican government passed a law in 2022 banning “pornographic or indecent” books from schools.
Most of the books that have been banned so far pertain to topics such as sexual orientation and identity.
The banning of the Bible comes amid a larger effort by US conservatives in states to ban teachings on controversial topics such as LGBT rights and racial identity. Bans on certain books deemed offensive are also in place in Texas, Florida, Missouri and South Carolina. Some liberal states have also banned books in some schools and libraries, citing perceived racially offensive content.
The Utah decision was made this week by the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City after a complaint filed in December 2022. Officials say they have already removed the seven or eight copies of the Bible they had on their shelves, noting that the text was never part of students’ curriculum.
The committee did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages contained “vulgarity or violence”.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper, the parent who complained said the King James Bible “has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition”, referring to the 2022 book-ban law.
The Utah state lawmaker who wrote the 2022 law had previously dismissed the Bible removal request as a “mockery”, but changed course this week after calling it a “challenging read” for younger children.
“Traditionally, in America, the Bible is best taught, and best understood, in the home, and around the earth, as a family,” Ken Ivory wrote on Facebook.
The district’s ruling determined that the Bible’s content does not violate the 2022 law, but does include “vulgarity or violence not suitable for younger students”. The book will remain in place in local high schools.
Bob Johnson, the father of a primary school student in the Davis School District, told CBS News that he opposes the Bible’s removal.
“I can’t think of what’s in the Bible that you would have to take out of it. Its not like there’s pictures in it,” he said.
The district is not the first in the US to remove the Bible from its shelves.
A Texas school district last year pulled the Bible from library shelves after complaints from members of the public opposed to conservatives efforts to ban some books.
Last month, students in Kansas requested to have the Bible removed from their school library.
Inside the battle for and against books
How the Bible became conservative book bans’ unintended target
As a Republican-led push to purge books picks up steam, some communities are zeroing in on a text that’s chock full of sex and violence
The Bible has been pulled from school shelves in one Utah community
Illustrated | Gettyimages
JUNE 7, 2023
The ongoing efforts in deep-red states like Florida and Texas to ban books deemed culturally or sexually inappropriate for their depictions of racial injustices and LGBTQ+ content have spawned a surprising form of retaliation. Parents and community members alarmed by what they see as right-wing censorship have begun targeting the Bible for removal from schools and libraries, arguing the book’s graphic depictions of sex and violence make it just as subversive and inappropriate as the materials being banned under conservative and often overtly evangelical Christian auspices. In one Utah community, the Bible has been permanently pulled from elementary school shelves, while other states have been pressured to review whether the Bible violates any of their newly passed restrictions on educational materials. All told, access to the Bible has become an ironic and surprisingly effective tool in the growing fight over who controls what children read.
The Bible is too “vulgar or violent” for some schools
Casual observers might be hard-pressed to distinguish a recent article from the humor website McSweeney’s titled “Smutty books have no place in our schools. It’s time to ban the Bible” from a very real, if tongue firmly in cheek, petition submitted recently to Utah’s Davis School District to remove the King James Version from classrooms. The request follows a 2022 state ban on allegedly explicit reading material pushed by the conservative “Utah Parents United” advocacy group — an effort that “left off one of the most sex-ridden books around,” the anonymous petitioner wrote in their official complaint, the Bible. Citing “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape and even infanticide” as evidence that the “the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition,” the petitioners concluded that “this should be a slamdunk [sic].” It turns out, they were correct.
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Ceding that the Bible contained “vulgarity or violence,” a representative from Utah’s Davis School District confirmed to the Salt Lake City Tribune in June that the book would be removed from elementary and middle school shelves. It remains available for upper school students. The Torah and Quran have reportedly not been challenged, although just days after the Bible’s ban was announced, a similar petition was filed to restrict the Book of Mormon.
Bible bans and reviews are part of a larger national trend
Aside from Utah’s recent ban, the Bible has been pulled from school shelves for review, if not outright removal, in Florida, Missouri and Texas. While “not frequent,” this “kind of challenge where there’s criticism with the contents of the Bible, in response to an effort to remove other books from the library on the same grounds, is something we’ve seen in the past,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said. It’s “a reaction to efforts to ban so many books” across the country, Jonathan Friedman, the director of the Free Expression and Education program for the free speech advocacy group PEN America, agreed.
While Utah’s ban is still in effect, the efforts to review and restrict the Bible elsewhere have largely resulted in the material returning to library and classroom shelves after review by the respective supervisory agencies. Nevertheless, the broader point being made is that far-reaching efforts to restrict reading materials in the service of limiting educational inquiry at large will inevitably “sweep up ideas and materials that you actually agree with,” Caldwell-Stone said.
What has the reaction been?
Conservatives have pushed back on the effort to ban the Bible, accusing it of “trying to minimize the real concerns of parents,” according to Utah Parents United curriculum director Brooke Stephens. Utah Republican lawmaker Ken Ivory seemingly agreed, complaining that the “antics” ultimately “drain school resources.” However, in a lengthy statement posted to his Facebook page, Ivory, the legislator who initially sponsored Utah’s restrictive book criteria, ultimately accepted the Davis School District’s decision, ceding that the King James translation of the Bible can be a “challenging read for elementary or middle school children on their own” and “is best taught, and best understood, in the home, and around the earth, as a family.”
Still, education officials who remove material like the Bible for “fear that it might contain an image that could violate state law” shocks Caldwell-Stone. “It speaks to the heart of mass censorship.”
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