The Freedom from Religion Foundation, which describes itself as a nontheistic nonprofit, is giving Leon County School District an ultimatum: Ban the Bible or stop banning books altogether.
In an email sent to school board members on July 14, the Freedom from Religion Foundation piled onto a recent successful effort by the local chapter of the conservative group Moms for Liberty to pull five books found in Leon County high schools.
The next school board meeting will be 2 p.m. July 24 to discuss the first official book challenge hearing of “I am Billie Jean King” by Brad Meltzer.
“We are disturbed that the district has chosen to start removing books from school libraries based on content taken out of context at the request of extremist groups like Moms for Liberty,” foundation Staff Attorney Christopher Line said in the published email to the district.
Freedom from Religion says the Bible should be banned based on the same reasoning Moms for Liberty presented in their request; “sexually explicit content.”
“We write to request that the District either ban the bible based on the criterion of ‘sexually explicit content’ it has used to ban these books, or cease banning books and return the banned books to school shelves,” Line wrote in the email.
I’m pretty religious (Jewish) and am against book bans, but I support this. If Klanned Karenhood… I mean, Moms For Liberty, want books banned for sexual content, the Bible is prime for banning.
Here’s one story in the so called “family friendly” Bible that’s read to kids: After Lot escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gemorah, he and his daughters took refuge in a cave. The daughters thought that the entire world was destroyed and decided that they needed to repopulate the human race.
Unluckily, the only man that they knew was alive was their dad. “Luckily,” the cave was filled with barrels of wine. So the oldest girl got Lot drunk and she slept with him. The next night, they got dear old dad drunk again so the younger daughter could sleep with him. Both daughters wound up giving birth to children by their father.
Nothing says “family friendly” to Moms For Liberty like rape and incest, I guess.
Yeah well of course you’re for it, if I burned a Torah in front of a synagogue I’d bet you change your views very quickly on burning religious texts
You people are disgusting honestly
Lol. OP never said anything about burning bibles.
OP is also a bigot who hates other people apparently so it’s all the same. Racism is not ok, and I don’t care if you are Jewish, you have no right to be a bigot
I’m not Jewish. Raised “Christian”. And I am also okay with the Bible being banned in schools. In fact, I advocate for it
well I don’t, and I don’t care for bigotry from either side of the isle
So you agree that no books should be banned and are strongly opposed to banning queer books under the guise of protecting kids?
Then we all agree that the banned books should be unbanned?
Where was the bigotry? Because they said they were Jewish?
The Bible had tons of very inappropriate sexual material in it which is what the Moms for Liberty are trying to make sure does not get into schools. They should be advocating a ban.
Why do I get the impression that you would?
So do it. I bet we find that no one cares.
I’d argue it’s less of an issue to burn a religious text that is plenty replicated and easily accessible online than a small print fiction story.
And in the end it’s just paper. People can think of new stories to tell.
In the end, Mein Kampf is just paper too. And yet it inspired atrocities. I think you’re being disingenuous. A book can have lasting power and burning a book can also have lasting power in terms of messages and symbolism.
Personally, my issue is not that someone is burning a Koran or a Torah or whatever, it’s that they’re burning a book. Even symbolically, that’s saying the book shouldn’t be read. That it’s available online misses the point of the message.
Burning a religious text could send a hateful message, but it depends on the context. If the text or symbol has been used to justify hate, and the person burning the object expresses mainly a desire to be rid of the tyranny the object represents, then it’s ultimately an act defined more by liberation than oppression. If the object is being burned by someone who advocates oppression and has not experienced any tyranny from what the object represents, the act is more defined by hate. This is a hard thing to parse, and even harder to legislate, because it takes into account the history and changing power dynamics between social groups.
I’m not even talking about sending a hateful message about religion, I’m talking about sending the message that some information deserves to be destroyed. I just can’t agree there. Even about the most hateful text imaginable. It still needs to exist if just to show an example of what to avoid.