Some Utah schools have banned the Bible for 'vulgarity and violence'

A committee at the Davis County school district in Utah has determined that it will remove the Bible from elementary and middle schools for containing “vulgarity and violence.”

The move to ban the religious text follows a complaint from parents back in March that the Bible is “one of the most sex-ridden books around.”

They had submitted a request for their school district in Davis County to review the Bible for inappropriate content, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” were among the list of topics the parents noted 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.”

The code is a reference to a 2022 law passed in Utah to ban books that contain “pornographic or indecent” content from Utah schools.

As per the state’s new code, indecent content includes explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy or fondling.

The committee’s decision on the Bible ban is effective as of Thursday according to Davis School District spokesperson Christopher Williams.

The removal will be focused on elementary and middle school shelves, while high schools in Davis will retain the Bible.

Florida last year became the first in a wave of Republican states to enact laws making it easier for parents to challenge books in school libraries they deem to be pornographic, deal improperly with racial issues or in other ways be inappropriate for students.

While efforts to ban or censor educational material have come up sporadically over the years, critics and supporters credit Florida Governor and Republican presidential runner Ron DeSantis with inspiring a new wave of legislation in other Conservative states to regulate the available in schools and public libraries.

The number of attempts to ban or restrict across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.

With additional files from The Associated Press