The Salt Lake Tribune (Courtney Tanner) reports that the Bible will be removed from Davis (Utah) School District elementary and middle school libraries, “for containing ‘vulgarity or violence.'” A parent had asked, apparently as a protest against a recent Utah law that calls for removal of various school library books, that the Bible be removed; this seems to have been the response.
And the Utah law does seem to be remarkably broad, calling for removal from (among other things) school libraries of “sensitive material”:
(2)(b) A public school may not: (i) adopt, use, distribute, provide a student access to, or maintain 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 to mean “an instructional material that is pornographic or indecent material as that term is defined in Section 76-10-1235,” which is to say,
any material:
(i) defined as harmful to minors in Section 76-10-1201;
(ii) described as pornographic in Section 76-10-1203; or
(iii) described in Section 76-10-1227.
And Section 76-10-1227 provides, in relevant part,
(1) … (a) “Description or depiction of illicit sex or sexual immorality” means:
(i) human genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal;
(ii) acts of human masturbation, sexual intercourse, or sodomy;
(iii) fondling or other erotic touching of human genitals or pubic region; or
(iv) fondling or other erotic touching of the human buttock or female breast….
(2) (a) Subject to Subsection (2)(c), this section and Section 76-10-1228 do not apply to any material which, when taken as a whole, has serious value for minors.
(b) As used in Subsection (2)(a), “serious value” means having serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors, taking into consideration the ages of all minors who could be exposed to the material.
(c) A description or depiction of illicit sex or sexual immorality as defined in Subsection (1)(a)(i), (ii), or (iii) has no serious value for minors.
Thus, the prohibition isn’t limited to pornographic material, or material that appeals to the prurient interest of minors, describes or depicts sex or excretion in a matter that’s patently offensive when distributed to minors, or lacks serious value for minors (the usual definitions of what is “harmful to minors”). Rather, any description of sexual intercourse qualifies. Nor does the law require that (to quote a much narrower Wisconsin law) the description be “explicit and detailed.” So any book that describes sexual intercourse, unless it fits with narrow exceptions (e.g., “instructional material” “for medical courses”), must be excluded from public schools, including all public school libraries.
And there’s no definition offered of what counts as “description.” Perhaps one might draw a distinction between merely mentioning sex and describing it, but it’s far from clear where that line would be drawn. The quotes from the parent who challenged the Bible seem likely to qualify as description, for instance:
Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof….
So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
So both of Lot’s 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, my whole point is that Utah law appears to forbid such material in public school libraries regardless of whether it’s pornographic under any sensible definition, and regardless of whether it’s included in works that are of great educational value.
Perhaps I’m misreading the law, in which case I welcome correction. (Indeed, the Davis School District seems not to read the law the way I do, given that it did allow the Bible to remain in high school libraries, and decided to move the book for containing “vulgarity or violence,” rather than descriptions of sexual intercourse.) But that’s how matters seem to me.
The post Utah Law Forbids Public School Libraries From Having Any Books That “Describe” “Sexual Intercourse” Etc. appeared first on Reason.com.
