Worried about kids reading about rape, murder and incest? Better ban the Bible, then | Opinion

In a movement sweeping the country, many parents, governors and legislatures say they have lost control over children’s education to “woke” educators, authors and librarians. They are convinced that schools and libraries are presenting material that is totally inappropriate for impressionable minors.

“This is not about banning books,” says Keith Flaugh, a founder of Florida Citizens Alliance. “It’s about protecting the innocence of our children and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.”

These protesters say liberal educators present issues of sex and sexual identity in the classroom, while libraries carry books that describe everything from trans kids to prostitution to graphic depictions of inappropriate sexual contact.

For such people, stories about rape and incest, onanism and adultery, homosexuality and violent sex have no place on the bookshelves where children could find them.

That is why they should demand that schools ban the Bible. In fact, a Utah parent is requesting that the Bible be banned in schools because, under a new state law, it is “pornographic.”

From the beginning of our Holy Scriptures, there are verses that cannot be ignored. The Bible implies a debauched sexual scene with Noah in a drunken state with his youngest son (Genesis 9) and that Lot, the nephew of Abraham, was incestuously seduced by his daughters (Genesis 19).

Given America’s commitment to monogamy, Abraham and Jacob’s mistresses, who produce their children, would be a wholly inappropriate reading.

The word “onanism” comes from our sacred scripture when God strikes down Onan for “spilling his seed” (Genesis 38), which could, of course, strike fear or, more likely, inspire our vulnerable boys to self-stimulation.

How do today’s protective parents explain the heroic Judah, ancestor of Jesus, having sex with a prostitute — who happens to be his daughter-in-law — or Prince Amon’s violent rape and disposal of his sister, Princess Tamar (2 Samuel: 13)?

Then there are the voyeurism, sexual assault and murder scenes of King David and Bathsheba that could be cited to justify nonconsensual premarital sex (2 Samuel 11). As for homosexuality, parents should be appalled by David’s passionate and tearful claim that his love for Jonathan far exceeded his love of women (2 Samuel: 1).

Like King David, his ancestor according to Christian Scripture, Jesus descends from incest and rape, adultery and prostitution. It would seem that for this protest movement, the stories of the Bible would pose a dire threat: titillating the sexual fantasies of our children.

There is a further step groups such as the Florida Citizens Alliance could take, committed as they are to shielding defenseless children. Not only would the Holy Bible be expelled from public schools and libraries. If they are serious, righteous parents and politicians should demand that it be removed from all churches and synagogues across the land.

Florida can follow the lead of a Utah law that forbids a business from distributing to a minor any material with a description of illicit sex or sexual immorality and encourages parents to sue any priest, minister or rabbi who allows children to read the Bible.

According to the logic of this movement, the danger is real that a child, bored by a dreary sermon or mediocre Sunday-school teacher, could flip through the Bible, find one of the graphic salacious pages and learn more about violent fornication, murderous rape and homoerotic love than found in any book in the school library.

The deep-pocketed conservative donors, parents and politicians — none more vocal than Florida Gov. DeSantis in his wide-ranging attacks — who are so eager to purge schools of reading materials are claiming to protect children’s moral character. They believe that the purity of the soul of America is in jeopardy. They ask Americans to stand against inappropriate sexual indoctrination.

They are wrong. As Jesus taught, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

It is transparently clear how dangerous these politically driven assaults are on truth and on our freedoms, an attack that undermines civilization itself.

David Elcott is a political scientist, Bible scholar and professor teaches at Green Haven maximum security prison, in Dutchess County, New York, for Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison. He is the author of “Faith, Nationalism and the Future of Liberal Democracy.”