Thursday, March 23, 2023

No One Could Have Foreseen

“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” the parent wrote in their request, listing topics they found concerning in the religious text. “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 parent points to action by Utah Parents United, a right-leaning group that has led the efforts to challenge books here for being inappropriate. It has largely centered on texts written by and about the LGBTQ community and people of color. 
Based on the new Utah law, something is indecent if it includes explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy or fondling. 
According to state attorneys, material doesn’t have to be “taken as a whole” in those situations or left on the shelf during a review. If there is a scene involving any of those acts, it should be immediately removed.
 …
Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who sponsored the bill to remove pornographic books from school libraries, called the request to pull the Bible “antics that drain school resources.”
As opposed to requests he approved of; those don’t drain resources.
He also acknowledged the parent who submitted the request “really had to go through their Bible study” to come up with the list of examples they found inappropriate. He added: “I hope they paid attention to other parts of the Bible, though.”
He’s clearly not familiar with another book, called a concordance. (A list of all words found in the KJV, and the verses where they can be found.)

The definition used in the statute is clearly written to comply with Supreme Court holdings on pornography. But that’s the problem with trying to write a law that doesn’t really follow 1st Amendment jurisprudence; because it can’t.
"Which is being banned from school libraries?”
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