They banned the Bible!

Because it's pornographic

In June 2023, the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City banned the Bible.

The decision to remove the Bible was made by the Davis School District after an anonymous parent complained that the book has material unsuitable for children. The parent said that the King James Bible has, “No serious values for minors because it’s pornographic by our new definition.” And no-one could argue that fact. The Bible has some seriously messed up stuff going on.

I was bought up Catholic. Church every Sunday and a Catholic secondary school. I recited all the prayers, sang the hymns but I don’t think I ever really believed any of it. Church was just too boring, and my mind wandered. We had to kneel regularly and when I was small, the wooden pew in front of me was right at teeth level and I would chew on the varnished pew. Years later, still going to the same church and sitting in the same pews, I would see my own teeth marks like a hungry little vandal’s primitive symbol.

In my teenage years, I volunteered to become an altar boy. I decided that if I had to attend, I might as well do something a little bit interesting. When my altar partner Brent and I guzzled some of the church’s red wine on Sunday morning, it was the most entertaining mass in years as Brent fell asleep then vomited in the corner much to the horror of the assembled parish. Red wine vomit stained his pristine white vestment, and our altar boy careers were over. The prayers and sermons might as well have been in Latin for all I understood. As for the bible, it was just too implausible, the Lord of The Rings was more realistic.

St. Patricks church Masterton

The Old Testament portrayed God as a vengeful, bigoted old white dude possibly suffering from dementia with huge delusions of grandeur. It’s no wonder Republicans love the Old Testament because God is not unlike Donald Trump. You have the story of Lot and his dodgy incestuous relationship with his daughters after God turned Mum into a pillar of salt. Poor old Job who lost everything after a bored God had a wager with Satan. And Abraham who was forced to kill his own son as a test of faith. The Old Testament also has some great fantasy with talking trees, talking donkeys, and a man being eaten by a giant fish.

It gets a little bit more light-hearted in the New Testament with Jesus doing cool stuff like walking on water, turning water into wine, healing people, and giving them magic mushrooms but he also recommended cutting off body parts if they cause you to sin.

There is much disagreement over who actually wrote the Bible. The process of its formation probably took several hundred years. The majority of scholars believe that most of the books of the Bible are the work of multiple authors and that all have been edited heavily to produce the works known today. There are many versions, but no single author is claiming responsibility.

Ancient writer’s groups with wonderfully vague titles like: Priestly Sources, Prophetic Circles, Holy Scribes, Babylonian Disciples and even Deuteronomistic layers from the Former Prophets, have contributed. Whoever they were and whenever they wrote it, there was comprehensive creative licence going on. The Bible is rife with incest, murder, violence, vengeance, corruption, beasts from hell, patricide, infanticide, every kind of cide, rape, plagues, decapitations, cannibalism and torture. It’s probably not as bad as Mel Gibson’s the Passion of Christ, but it’s pretty bad.

“More pain Jim”

It must be said, there is a lot of good stuff in there too. The last six of the ten commandments are a pretty sensible set of rules. And if nothing else, Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do unto You is a good way to live your life, despite two too many unto’s. But this is just common sense in being a good human and there is so much bad stuff in the Bible it outweighs the good. So, you can understand why a concerned parent would want it banned.

Utah’s Republican government had passed a law in 2022 banning ‘pornographic or indecent’ books from schools and allowing parents to challenge the books they didn’t approve of in school libraries. When they passed the law, they didn’t have the Bible in mind.

According to the writer’s organisation Pen America, the most frequently banned books in the 2022-23 US school year were: Gender Queer - A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Flamer by Mike Curato, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Most of the books that have been banned so far are about sexual orientation and racial identity amid a larger effort by US conservatives to ban teachings on topics such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial issues. Conservative Republican states such as Texas, Florida, Missouri and South Carolina have passed these draconian laws in an obvious and deliberate attempt to demonize and terrorize LGBTQ+ people.

In Florida, Republican governor Ron DeSantis, passed the “don’t say gay” laws concerning the teaching of gender and LGBTQ+ issues. The bill gives parents the power to sue teachers or schools they believe violate the deliberately vague law. The threat of being hit with lawsuits means that underfunded school districts have to ask their teachers to avoid saying or doing anything that could possibly be interpreted as queer. Never mind actually being queer.

It has been a Republican crusade as 1500 books were banned in 2022.  Thirty percent are about race, while twenty-six percent have LGBTQ+ characters or themes. It’s not far removed from Q-Anon conspiracy craziness, and it shows no signs of abating.

The anonymous parent who filed the complaint against the King James Bible said the holy scripture of the Christian faith contained “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and infanticide.” Ultimately the Utah House of Representatives could not argue with this as it was all there in writing. And so, the bible was banned although with that review, its sales probably doubled.

The book banning bill was driven by the Utah Parents United, an outspoken right-wing coalition of 4,000 parents that push for conservative policies in schools across the state with the support of the Utah House of Representatives. After the Bible was banned, the anonymous parent said: “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.”

This time the conservatives had their vaguely written, repressive laws used against them. Matthew 7:1 - “Judge not, that ye not be judged.”

AI did ok with the hands this time but I’m not sure about Gods nose…