Colorado Springs Gets Schooled on "Inappropriate Sexual and Violent Content"...in the Bible

Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs removed three books from its libraries after receiving a letter of complaint from a conservative activist group called Advocates for D-20 Kids earlier this summer: Ellen Hopkins’s Identical, Rachel Vail’s Lucky and Sapphire’s Push, the novel upon which the Academy Award-winning film Precious was based.

That move inspired the Freedom From Religion Foundation to suggest one more book that should be removed based on the same criteria of “inappropriate sexual and violent content”: the Bible.

“A parent of a student from District 20 reached out to us,” explains FFRF attorney and spokesperson Chris Line. “She was concerned not only that these books had been removed, but how and how quickly. We shared her concern that this outside group, Advocates for D-20 Kids, had not only had their voices heard, but heard immediately. Both we and that parent reached out to the district to suggest that if they’re going to ban these books, then the Bible should be banned as well. Not because it’s a religious book, but if you have a problem with graphic sexual content and violence, then based on the sheer amount of that in the Bible, you should ban that, too.”

In the FFRF’s June 21 letter to the district, Line goes into great detail as to exactly how and where the Bible gets into such issues, referencing passages such as Ezekiel 23: 20-21, in which a prostitute “lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses,” and who “longed for the lewdness of your youth, when...[her] bosom was caressed and young breasts fondled.” Or Genesis 19, which recounts “another sordid and preposterous story that defames incest victims [as it] recounts the exploits of two daughters who, having just witnessed a genocide and the murder of their mother by a pyromaniacal god, supposedly got their father drunk and seduced him in order to bear his children.” Then there's Leviticus, which “describes sperm, intercourse, menstruation, homosexuality, bestiality, adultery and whores.” And Numbers “depicts a holy man impaling a woman through her belly and describes in loving detail how to steal and rape virgins as war booty.”

As anyone who's studied the Bible can tell you, there's a lot more where that came from.

The FFRF offered Academy School District 20 a choice: You can either stand by your criteria for banning books and ditch the Bible, too, or admit your actions were in error and reinstate the three books. “Which is really what we want,” Line says. “That’s important to understand. We don’t want books to be banned. We’re advocates of education and freedom of thought. Book banning is bad. There’s no true freedom of thought, conscience or even religion unless government and our public schools are free from religion and its control over thought.”

Within a month, the district admitted that the way it had gone about removing those books was in error, and reinstated the three novels. “After careful consideration," its response to FFRF notes, “the District assures that the removal of library materials will be based on established policies and procedures.”

That's not exactly a guarantee that the retention of these books — and many like them, often written by under-represented groups in terms of both race and sexual orientation — is a done deal. “So we’re not completely out of the woods,” Line says. “These books could still be challenged through the district. But we were able to stop this. It’s an important victory for now, but there’s so much more to be done.”
Derrick Wilburn, a candidate for the D20 School Board this November and a member of Advocates for D-20 Kids, went on record in a Colorado Gazette guest editorial in May supporting the initial complaint regarding the books, comparing them to “learning [about] anal sex and blowjobs.” Neither Wilburn nor his campaign returned emails inviting comment on the book ban, and no one else from Advocates for D-20 Kids could be reached. The group's website shows up as suspended, offering only a generic landing page that promises to “Be back soon!”

District officials did not respond to request for comment. But the FFRF has plenty to say.

“We trust students to explore these subjects for themselves," Line says. "To read these books, to be challenged in certain ways, to learn and grow. We obviously all agree that actual pornography should not be in a school library. But what these groups are doing is saying that any sexual content in a book is pornography. We have to protect books in schools, and ensure that there’s no discrimination occurring. We’re keeping our eye out for viewpoint discrimination all over the country. We’re alarmed by it and how common it’s become. We’re doing our best to help where we can.”