OAN’s Roy Francis
7:51 AM – Friday, June 2, 2023
Copies of the King James Bible are to be removed from the libraries of elementary and junior high schools in Davis County, Utah after complaints by parents claiming that the Bible contains material inappropriate for young children.
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A review committee for the Davis School District decided to pull the Bible after claims that it contained “vulgarity and violence.” The Bible will not be allowed in libraries of elementary and junior high schools of the district, but it will remain available in the high schools.
Davis County School District Communications Director Christopher Williams said that the committee had actually determined that the Bible “does not contain sensitive material as defined by Utah Code,” however they still removed it from 7-8 schools because of “age appropriateness.”
In 2022, Utah State Legislators passed a law, HB374, which banned sensitive material from schools. Since the law passed, dozens of books have been removed from schools around the state.
The law states that if a parent presents a formal request to the district, schools must remove books that contain “human genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal, acts of human masturbation or sexual intercourse, and fondling or other erotic touching of human genitals or public regions.”
In March, an unknown parent of a Davis School District student had made a complaint to the District that the Bible contained material inappropriate for younger children, and that it contains “no serious values for minors.”
The petition, which was obtained by FOX 13 News, stated that “Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible. You’ll no doubt find that the Bible has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.”
Representative Ken Ivory (R-Utah), who had sponsored the bill in 2022, said that the challenge of the Bible is “a backhanded slap to parents that are simply trying to keep a healthy learning environment for all students in the schools.”
The committee’s decision to remove the Bible from school shelves has already been appealed by a different parent.
The district will now form a committee which consists of three members of Davis School District’s Board of Education to review the original complaint and the recent appeal. Once a review is finished, the committee will make a recommendation to the full board on how to move forward.
The board will make its final decision in a public meeting that has not yet been scheduled.
The Davis School District currently has other religious texts available to check out which include the Book of Mormon, the Torah and the Quran.
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