A Utah (USA) school district removes the Bible from libraries for "pornographic or indecent" content

MADRID, 3 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Davis school district, in Utah, has approved the removal of the Bible from libraries over which it has jurisdiction after a complaint from a family that highlighted the "vulgar and violent" content of the Christian holy book under the protection of a state law that prohibits the contents "pornographic or indecent."

The complaint, filed in December, stresses that the book "is one of the books with the most sex there is" because it contains "incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape and even infanticide," according to the report. Axios news portal.

"It is pornographic according to the new definition" contained in state law, the complaint highlights. "The books that have been banned so far contain much lesser offenses, so this should be a clear case," she adds. The complaint includes more than 60 "offensive" quotes from the Bible.

A district commission decided in May that the book "contains no sensitive material" but also recommended its removal from primary and secondary schools "according to age criteria due to vulgar and violent content." The decision has led to the withdrawal of the book from between seven and eight schools.

The director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, has indicated that this case "demonstrates how the censorship of material narrows educational opportunities and reduces student access to information."

The Utah School Sensitive Content Act was passed in 2022 and since then has served to remove up to 52 books from school library shelves, most of them LGTBI-themed.