The ban was instigated by a parent who was frustrated over book bans and was hoping to expose the “bad faith process.”
The 72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools after a committee reviewed the scripture in response to a parental complaint.
Other books in the school system have been removed, including Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” in response to a 2022 state law requiring districts to include parents in decisions over what constitutes “sensitive material.”
The parent, in a copy of the complaint obtained by NBC News that redacts their identity, said their effort to get the Bible banned was in protest of a 2022 Utah law that made it easier to remove “pornographic or indecent” content from schools.
The legislation, – H.B. 374 Sensitive Materials in Schools – was supported by conservative activist groups, including Utah Parents United.
“I thank the Utah Legislature and Utah Parents United for making this bad faith process so much easier and way more efficient,” the parent said in the complaint. “Now we can all ban books and you don’t even need to read them or be accurate about it. Heck, you don’t even need to see the book!”
“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” the parent wrote. “You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.”
From parent complaint obtained by NBC News
On Friday, according to the Associated Press, a complaint was submitted about the signature scripture of the predominant faith in Utah, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church.
District spokesperson Chris Williams confirmed that someone filed a review request for the Book of Mormon but would not say what reasons were listed, or whether it was from the same person who complained about the Bible, citing a school board privacy policy.
Representatives for the church declined to comment on the challenge. Members of the faith also read the Bible.
This latest demand, reports ABC News, 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.
The effort to ban, limit or restrict books at libraries and other public settings is on the rise, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
“ALA opposes censorship of any materials that meet the information needs of a community’s members, including students,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in a statement on Friday.
According to Caldwell-Stone, “The curation of library collections for young people should not be left to politicians and advocacy groups who place politics above young peoples’ education needs.”
