Book banning is such a slippery slope as evidenced by HB900, the so-called READER Act, sponsored by Rep. Jared Patterson and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, becoming effective September 1, 2023.
The act prohibited public school libraries from vendors from selling library material rated "sexually explicit."
Now, all Hell broke loose when Canyon Independent School District Superintendent Darryl Flusche decided that, since many, many passages and accounts in the Bible are sexually explicit and that since the “standard for library content prohibits books that have one instance of sexual content… HB900 doesn’t allow numerous books, including the full text of the Bible, to be available in the school library.” He, therefore, had the Bible removed from the school libraries in that district.
Flusche went so far as to say that, if any student wanted a copy of the Bible, he'd connect them with local churches who'd be more than happy to give them a copy.
Upon learning that the superintendent in Canyon, Texas, a town of 16,000 about 19 miles south of Amarillo, had removed the "full text" of the Bible from school libraries, Representative Patterson, the author of the bill, was incensed, or maybe I should say "righteously indignant," claiming the Bible was protected under HB900.
Patterson added: “Moreover, the Bible does not contain sexually explicit content as defined by HB 900. Any assertion to the contrary is either rooted in ignorance of state law or an open hostility to the will of the people.”
It's unlikely that Rep. Patterson or even Governor Abbott have ever even read the Bible from cover to cover and are thus unaware of the book's many sexually explicit situations described in detail.
Without even checking the Bible, a book I haven't picked up in over thirty years, I can think of two such accounts that are indeed sexually explicit and, could easily, locate many more.
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| Painting by Hendrick Goltzius, 1616, depicting Lot having sex with his two daughters |
The Bible discusses a man named Lot, an actual ancestor of the historical Jesus who, on one occasion, got drunk and had sex with his two daughters, impregnating both. That's a horribly immoral, dastardly act for an adherent to any religion, let alone from a man described in 2 Peter 2:7 as "a righteous man deeply troubled by the shameless immorality of the wicked."
Another account that troubled me as a young man was a situation involving Isrealite King David, someone described in the Bible as "a man after God's own heart." The married king, the Bible says, happened upon a married woman bathing in a lake or pond and summoned her to his chambers for sexual purposes. The woman, Bath-Sheba, like Lot's daughters, also got pregnant from the sexual relations with the king.
To cover up the situation, King David had Bath-Sheba's husband put on the front lines during a military conflict, authorizing the troops behind him in battle to withdraw, effectively murdering Bath-Sheba's husband.
Now, King David had committed two capital offenses for which the Mosaic Law prescribes death, but the God of the Bible "let it slide" as David was a big shot, the King. God's punishment? God killed the young baby of David and Bath-Sheba, the only innocent in the whole hideous situation.
Governor Abbott and Representative Patterson should simply Google "sexually explicit passages in the Bible" and they'll discover dozens of such, but that's not really the point. Men held out as good examples in the Bible had sex with their "father's wife," with prostitutes, and with their sisters. "God's chosen people" as they were called in the Bible, executed men, women, babies and livestock of their enemies, while kidnapping the "virgin girls" for sexual pleasure.
HB900 was not intended to protect students from reading the Bible's many sexually explicit passages, but to protect them from books with LGBTQ references, but neither Abbott and Patterson are man enough to admit it. They'll protect the "Holy Bible" because it's the religious book of their chosen faith despite all the sexually explicit references.
Christians, especially those called evangelicals, are not morally upstanding folk, but religious hypocrites who "strain the gnat and swallow the camel" so to speak.
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The so-called evangelicals, en masse, supported Donald Trump, a sexual predator and pussy-grabber extraordinaire, for President because he once held up a Bible. Interestingly, Trump's first three likely nominations for positions in his administration were all sexual predators: Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
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