SW News: A school district in the United States has banned the Holy Bible after a parent complained that some verses were too obscene and violent for young children. It was the Davis School District in Salt Lake City having 72,000 students which removed the Bible from elementary and middle schools following a review by a committee as a response to the complaint of a parent.

A 2022 state law gives parents greater power in taking decisions over what constitutes sensitive material in schools. The school district committee announced the decision regarding the King James Version of the Bible in an online database of requests for review. However, it did not explain which passages contained violence and obscenity.

It was the Salt Lake Tribune that obtained a copy of the complaint by means of a public records request. In the complaint, the parent alleged that the Bible did contain incidents of rape, incest and prostitution. The parent said that the school district was ceding children’s education, First Amendment Rights and library access to Parents United.

The December 11 complaint says, “Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible. You’ll no doubt find that the Bible (under state law) has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.”

This is not the first time that the Bible has been taken off school shelves. Last year, it was banned in school districts in Texas and Missouri after it ended up in the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books. During debates on the norms used to expand bans on books for children, there have been concerns about the Bible and its content.

This year the state of Arkansas enacted a law that makes librarians liable for criminal penalties if they provide “harmful” materials to minors. This creates a new process for the public to request materials that need to be taken away from library racks.