THE Salt Lake Tribune (Courtney Tanner) reports that the Bible will be removed from elementary and middle school libraries in the Davis (Utah) School District, “for containing ‘vulgarity or violence'”. asked, apparently in protest of a recent Utah law that calls for the removal of various books from school libraries, that the Bible be removed; that seems to have been the answer.
And the Utah Law seems to be remarkably broad, calling for the removal (among other things) of school libraries of “sensitive material”:
(2)(b) A public school may not: (i) adopt, use, distribute, provide a student with access to, or retain in the school setting, sensitive materials….
{(1)(f)(i) “School setting” (includes), for a public school: … (B) in a school library ….}
“Sensitive material” is in turn defined as “teaching material of a pornographic or indecent nature, as that term is defined in Item 76-10-1235,” that’s to say,
any material:
(i) defined as harmful to minors in Item 76-10-1201;
(ii) described as pornographic in Item 76-10-1203; Or
(iii) described in Item 76-10-1227.
And Item 76-10-1227 provides, in the relevant part,
(1) … (a) “Description or depiction of illicit sexual relations or sexual immorality” means:
(i) human genitalia in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal;
(ii) acts of human masturbation, sexual intercourse or sodomy;
(iii) fondling or other erotic touching of the human genitalia or pubic region; Or
(iv) fondling or other erotic touching of the human buttock or female breast….(2) (a) Subject to paragraph (2)(c), this section and Rule 76-10-1228 do not apply to any material which, taken as a whole, has great value to minors.
(b) As used in subsection (2)(a), “serious value” means having serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors, taking into account the age of all minors who may be exposed to the material.
(c) A description or representation of illicit sexual relations or sexual immorality as defined in subsection (1)(a)(i), (ii) or (iii) has no serious value for minors.
Thus, the prohibition is not limited to pornographic material, or material that appeals to the lustful interest of minors, describes or depicts sex or excretion in material that is patently offensive when distributed to minors, or lack of serious value to minors (the usual definitions of “harmful to minors”). Instead, any description of sexual intercourse qualifies. Nor does the law require that (to use a much narrower term Wisconsin Law) the description must be “self-explanatory and detailed”. Thus, any book that describes sexual intercourse, unless it corresponds to narrow exceptions (e.g., “teaching materials” “for medical classes”), should be excluded from public schools, including all public school libraries.
And there is no proposed definition of what counts as “description”. One could perhaps draw a distinction between simply mentioning sex and describing it, but it is far from clear where that line would be drawn. Quotes from the Bible-challenging parent seem likely to qualify as descriptive, for example:
Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them to you, and you can do whatever you want with them. But do nothing to these men, for they have passed under the protection of my roof….
So that they made their father drink wine that night too, and the younger daughter came in and lay with him. Again, he didn’t notice when she went to bed or when she got up.
So Lot’s two daughters became pregnant by their father.
I am not, of course, suggesting that this passage is pornographic, or that the Bible should be removed from public school libraries. Rather, all I’m saying is that Utah law appears to prohibit this type of material from public school libraries. regardless whether it is pornographic by any sensible definition, and regardless of whether it is included in works that have high educational value.
Perhaps I am misinterpreting the law, in which case I welcome the correction. (Indeed, the Davis School District doesn’t seem to read the law the way I do, given that it allowed the Bible to remain in high school libraries, and decided to move the book to contain “vulgarity. or violence,” rather than descriptions of sex.) But that’s how it seems to me.
