Kenneth Niemeyer
Sun, March 26, 2023
A Utah parent asked that the Bible be removed from a high school because of its "sex-ridden" nature.
The state lawmaker who sponsored the bill said the request was a "mockery" of the law.
Laws banning certain kinds of books have plagued multiple states in recent years.
A Utah parent said that a book ban law passed in the state made it "much easier" to request that the Bible be removed from schools for its "sex-ridden" content.
According to a complaint filed against Davis High School in December 2022, recently obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, the unnamed parent thanked the state legislature for making it "way more efficient" to request book bans.
"Now we can all ban books and you don't even need to read them or be accurate about it," the complaint says, with just a hint of sarcasm. "Heck, you don't even need to see the book!"
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed H.B. 374 — also called the Sensitive Materials in Schools Act — into law in March 2022. The bill bans books with "pornographic or indecent" material from schools and school libraries. Critics of the bill say it has been used to disproportionately target books written by people of color and books with LGBTQ themes.
Book bans have plagued US schools in recent years across multiple states, including Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Florida. In September 2022, the Oklahoma education secretary threatened to revoke the teaching license of a teacher who gave her students a link to the Brooklyn Library's banned books database.
Utah Parents United — a conservative parents group that pushes for book bans in schools — has requested that some books be removed from Davis High School, which is about 20 miles north of Salk Lake City, according to the complaint.
"I noticed there's a gap, though," the parent said in the complaint. "Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible. Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide."
The parent said that the legislature would "no doubt find" that the Bible violates the state's new law because it has "'no serious values for minors because it's pornographic by our new definition."
"Get this PORN out of our schools! If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk," the parent wrote in the complaint.
State Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican who sponsored the bill, told The Tribune that the request to ban the Bible from Davis High School was "antics that drain school resources." Ivory did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Sunday.
"For people to minimize that, and to make a mockery of it, is very sad," Ivory said, according to the paper.
The Davis School District and Utah Parents United did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Sunday. Utah Parents United told The Tribune in a statement that "we believe in following the law."
"That's all we're asking schools to do," the group said, according to the paper.
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