The book will, however, remain on high school library shelves.
A school district in the US state of Utah has banned the King James Bible in primary schools for “vulgarity and violence”, BBC reported. The decision to remove the book was made by the Davis School District, located north of Salt Lake City, after a parent complained that the book has material unsuitable for children.
As per Fox News, the complaint was filed in March after a statewide law passed in 2022 allowed residents to challenge the books found in school libraries.
The parent said in their complaint that the King James Bible ”has ‘no serious values for minors” because it’s pornographic by our new definition”.
”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,” the parent added in the complaint.
After a review of the complaint, officials confirmed that they have already removed seven or eight copies of the Bible that they had on their shelves. They did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages contained “vulgarity or violence”.
However, the Bible will remain on high school library shelves.
That committee decided to “retain the book in school library circulation only at the high school level based on age appropriateness due to vulgarity or violence,” according to a statement to NBC News on Friday from Christopher Williams, a spokesman for the district.
The banning of the Bible comes amid a larger effort by US conservatives to ban teachings on controversial topics such as LGBT rights and racial identity, as per BBC. Many books that pertain to topics such as sexual orientation and identity have already been removed from schools in several states.
A Texas school district, last year, pulled the Bible from library shelves after complaints from members of the public. Last month, students in Kansas requested to have the Bible removed from their school library as well.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, books like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and the graphic novel Gender Queer have been banned in schools across the state.
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