Responding to a new law allowing for "pornographic" books to be removed from school libraries, a Utah parent has moved to have "one of the most sex-ridden books around" removed as well, namely, the Bible.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the parent, who remains unidentified for privacy reasons, submitted their challenge on Dec. 11 along with an eight-page list of passages from the Bible that they found to be offensive and worth reviewing.
“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” the parent wrote in their request. “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.”
“Get this PORN out of our schools,” the parent wrote. “If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk.”
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The parent's move was in response to the conservative group Utah Parents United, which has challenged books in state schools for being inappropriate -- primarily focusing on books dealing with racial and LGBTQ subject matter.
"Based on the new Utah law, something is indecent if it includes explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy or fondling," The Tribune's report stated. "According to state attorneys, material doesn’t have to be 'taken as a whole' in those situations or left on the shelf during a review. If there is a scene involving any of those acts, it should be immediately removed."
In their request, the parent goes on to say: “I thank the Utah Legislature and Utah Parents United for making this bad faith process so much easier and way more efficient. 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!”
Utah Parents United responded, telling The Tribune: “We believe in following the law. That’s all we’re asking schools to do.”
Rep. Ken Ivory (R-West Jordan), the chief sponsor of the bill, called the parent's request another example of “antics that drain school resources.”
“There was a purpose to the bill and this kind of stuff, it’s very unfortunate,” he said. “There are any number of studies that directly link sexualization and hyper-sexualization with sexual exploitation and abuse. Certainly, those are things we don’t want in schools.”
“For people to minimize that and to make a mockery of it is very sad,” Ivory added.
Read the full report over at The Salt Lake Tribune.