A Kansas school district won't remove the Bible despite a challenge over its mature themes

Keep religion out of schools. Don't want young kids introduced to sex in school? Take out the mature themed Bible. Dont be hypocrites.

Fair is fair - if they're going to remove other books for "adult themes' then they need to remove the Bible. It's all or nothing...don't censor some things and not censor others.

Also there's no "attack" on Christianity of any form in the US. No Christians in the US are persecuted - you just aren't the majority anymore.

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Bannon said she filed her challenge to illustrate the consequences of censorship. The Bible is used as a textbook in Derby High School’s “Bible as Literature” course, a one-semester elective.

Pointing to verses about murder, masturbation, genocide, incest and other mature topics, Bannon argued that the religious text is just as provocative as some contemporary works.

Derby’s library committee removed Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” from classrooms and middle-school libraries in February, citing profanity, sexual themes and slurs related to mental disabilities.

The 12-member library committee met for nearly two hours last week and opted not to remove the Biblical literature elective or its materials. Officials said various editions of the Bible also have been donated to school libraries and remain on shelves.

Ed Belsan, who teaches the Bible course and serves on the library committee, said the class focuses on the influence of the Bible as one of the foundational writings of Western literature. Similarly, students in other courses learn about Greek and Roman mythology.

“If nothing else, they get exposed to a great book that far too many people have very strong opinions about and have never read,” Belsan said. “That’s true of so many banned books.”

Belsan said his students are assigned to read only 149 of the Bible’s more than 1,100 chapters. The course includes some violent passages, such as the story of Cain and Abel. He said the majority of verses cited in Bannon’s challenge aren’t covered in the course.

“I don’t want to give the impression that there’s nothing controversial in there. That would be a misrepresentation,” he said.

“Even ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is controversial because of the suicide. But what I tell the kids on Day One is, ‘Don’t follow these guys. They’re a terrible example.’ The story is about families and conflict.”

Committee member Kristin Sen said removing the Alexie novel may have been a mistake because lots of books have mature content.

“It seems like one person initiated this whole process, and now here we are,” she said. “And … it’s a slidey slope. Where does it end?”

Sen, who also serves on the Derby Public Library’s board of trustees, said the committee should be consistent when reviewing books and should keep the whole district in mind.

“We’re kind of heavily leaning on the parent that’s objecting, but we’re not thinking about the group of parents that are saying, ‘No. … This is a good book and needs to be taught in a classroom setting,’” she said. “There are parents who want their child to go out in the world with this experience and this education.”...