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By Aleks Phillips
U.S. News Reporter
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Christians have condemned a petition being considered by a school board in Utah that would ban the Bible over its sexual content, with one local minister telling Newsweek: "I've seen pornography and I've read the Bible—and they are different."
The request, submitted by an anonymous parent, seeks to challenge a state law, implemented in May 2022, which prohibits works that are deemed pornographic in nature. They described the Bible as "one of the most sex-ridden books around."
It comes amid a growing debate about measures to prohibit certain works in schools. Proponents of the bans say they are protecting children from indecent content, while authors and librarians have suggested the rules limit students' access to important works that offer narratives on challenging subjects.
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"The Bible's pretty raw, and there's some pretty raw stuff in there, but it's nothing compared to what kids see on their phones, on the computer, on the TV on a daily basis," Andrew Strang, youth and worship minister at the Evangelical Free Church of Salt Lake City, told Newsweek. "In the Bible, we also see God's redemptive nature in never condoning these things that are sinful but always judging, punishing and redeeming."
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Having "read the whole thing" and found it "not pornographic," he suggested that the Bible was being used as a "scapegoat" and wondered if other religious texts would also face similar petitions.
"These 2,000-year-old books—or however old they are—all have stuff in them that our culture would deem inappropriate, which is ironic because we allow things that should be deemed inappropriate," he said.
A redacted version of the request, first published by the Salt Lake Tribune, said that the Bible had been left off a list of books banned from schools under the new law, despite containing "incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide."
The parent appears to be objecting to the Sensitive Materials in Schools Act, which bans schools in Utah from providing students access to material deemed inappropriate for minors. This is defined as either pornographic material—"patently offensive in the description or depiction of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, sadomasochistic abuse, or excretion"—or material "harmful to minors."
However, the law does have exceptions for material which, "when taken as a whole, has serious value for minors," which is defined as containing literary, artistic, political, or scientific qualities or information beneficial to children.
The parent said that the Bible had "'no serious value for minors' because its pornographic by our new definition."
"Get this PORN out of our schools!" they added. "If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk."
The request was submitted to the Davis School District, which oversees educational institutions to the north of Salt Lake City, on December 11, but was only made public on Thursday.
Christopher Williams, a spokesperson for the district, told Fox News that the petition would be reviewed by a committee like any other. The district has so far received requests to review 81 books, 33 of which had been removed and 16 retained. The other 32 remain in the process.
"The Bible is one of those being reviewed," he told Newsweek.
Williams noted that the process was "time-consuming," but the committee aims to complete the review in 60 days.
"That being said, parents, at any time, can request that their individual child not have access to specific books," he added. "Those requests have always been granted."
"It is a process. Anyone who requests a book to be reviewed has to have standing," Williams said. "We don't jump to conclusions, we go through the entire process. We don't blow off one request because we think it's silly."
The petition specifically names Utah Parents United as being responsible for the banning of some of the other books. The organization—which describes itself as a group of parents who "promote legislation that supports parents in their role of parenting" and who speak out against "legislation that undermines parents in policy and education"—has previously lobbied for pornographic material to be removed from schools.
The anonymous submission said Utah Parents United had made "this bad faith process so much easier and way more efficient."
Nichole Mason, president of Utah Parents United, told Newsweek that "not every reference to sexual activity meets the criteria for removal from a school library."
"The law is meant to protect children from unrestricted access to explicit sexual content in K-12 schools," she added. "None of the passages from the Bible meet the Bright Line Standard for pornographic content."
"Oh sure, let's compare the book that has been printed more than any other book in human history (5 billion copies) with child smut books that have been printed a few thousand times," one Twitter user reacted to news of the petition to ban the Bible.
"One side wants to remove the Bible, one of the most significant works of literature in human history. The other side wants to remove 'Gender Queen,' an autobiographical comic written in 2014 about some dude's sexual proclivities," another wrote, adding a quizzical emoji.
"We have billboards in Salt Lake City that are more pornographic than anything you read in the Bible," Strang commented.
In January, Virginia's Madison County School Board removed 21 titles from libraries, citing adult content. These included The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a dystopian modern classic in which certain women are forced to have children for a ruling class, and several Stephen King novels.
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