Davis County bans the Bible and Utah AG Sean Reys is ready to indict God 

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It was bound to happen.

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes is naming God as a defendant in an unprecedented criminal pornography sting. I found this so alarming, I had to ask God myself, but his reply to my prayer was a terse, “My attorney—you know him, Mr. Mike Lee—has cautioned me not to discuss the matter.”

“But,” God added, “I will say this: I have always had reverence for the Mosaic Law—which I personally drafted—and I will continue to cut babies in half in response to conflicting ownership claims by two sets of parents.”

It seems that the Bible is now a part of the growing list of reading materials considered to be grossly unsuitable for young people, and may soon be targeted as National Literary Enemy No. 1. That makes perfect sense—after all The Bible, with all its juicy stories, cannot be defended. It is responsible for igniting the prurient interests of its readers and generally undermining the morals of society.

The tragedy is that, because it’s a religious text, its gruesome stories are blindly accepted as the way God did things back in the old days. (Hack up a few people; push your daughter out the front door, to be raped by a mob of men all night; get your father drunk and get a positive pregnancy test; punish a man for not having the heart to make the slaughter of a nation complete.) And, certainly, all the young people will sheepishly admit that The Bible’s where they’ve been going to find an education—where Playboy, Playgirl and Hustler are unavailable by parental mandate and the only illustrations are confined to imagination.

If the sex, rape and incest in The Bible aren’t objectionable and titillating enough to have it banned from school libraries, God’s behavior in ordering the Israelites to kill every Amalekite man, woman, child and farm animal, makes Putin look like some kind of a saint. We should view it as a legitimate miracle since it was all done with a Swiss Army Knife—not one AK47 or AR15 in sight.

Actually, Reyes is hoping that the Bible can be condensed down to a compilation of just the most violent stories, thereby making it more suitable for the elementary and junior high schools. With all the frantic stupidity and the mob mentality of school library bannings and burnings, A.G. Reyes’ move to prosecute God should be no surprise.

Reyes maintains that he is only interested in “protecting the kids,” and deftly makes his point: “How can we do that if we don’t keep them safe in their little boxes? We must take an aggressive stance on this terrible problem, and that means investigating and apprehending those who are guilty, no matter their political, societal or religious rank.” You’d think that God would get a “free pass,” but it looks like even He can’t escape the arm of Lady Justice.

Ah, yes, but there’s one caveat: It seems that, in order to distance himself from that book, God used a bunch of lackeys, over many years, to do most of the writing and—to his wise, legal credit—he never even applied to the Library of Congress for a copyright. That said, any attempt to prosecute is likely to fail on the technicality that he had nothing to do with the Book.

The last legislative session of Utah’s anointed spawned a series of bills designed to protect the young. The successful ratification and enactment of HB374 means that the numerous public school libraries can dredge through their Dewey Decimal card files and begin an en-masse excision of any book that encourages thoughts about body parts or what adults do with them. Specifically, the law prohibits “…pornographic or indecent material as defined as harmful to minors in Section 76-10-120I, described as pornographic in Section 76-10-1203, or described in Section 76-10-1227. School library books that meet any of these statutory definitions are prohibited from school libraries.”

Consequently, Utah’s Davis School District has finally taken decisive administrative action to hide the Bible from impressionable young minds. As Utah parents, we must all hang our heads in shame to have allowed the tender and innocent to be exposed to a book of such smut and violence—especially in our own homes.

If anything, it’s surprising that the latest school library hit list title didn’t arrive sooner. Surely, no school district should allow such unmitigated filth as is found in the King James Version. After all, the standards of decency, established for all other elementary and junior high school reading, had already been clearly defined, to wit: It’s just a matter of applying the rules to each and every book, regardless of religious inclinations.

Also, worthy of applause, is A.G. Reyes’ legal opinion that Barbie Dolls—the original vintage productions, complete with nipples—be banned from the state as a “terrible threat to the salvation of the young.” (He had also asked the Legislature to create a law mandating that all nursing infants and their siblings wear opaque sunglasses during their mothers’ breast feedings to make sure that all nipples would be obscured from view. And, of course, he’s insisting that any copies of Michelangelo’s “David” be modified in such a way as to change the statue’s pronoun from “him” to “it.” Good thinking, Mr. Reyes!)

Medical books, old editions of National Geographics with bare-breasted Africans, photos of milking machines doing their job and all classified advertisements in the livestock section labeled “stud service” will also find no place in our school libraries. Reyes, in his true form of “Good Samaritan,” suggests that you send all of those old National Geographics to him—for disposal. And that’s not the end of it, Reyes is hell-bent on ridding our state of its 4-H Clubs’s breeding programs—and particularly the once-sacrosanct project of watching rabbits doing what they seem to do best.

Ridiculous? For many Americans, we’re seeing the return of the Middle Ages. Now that vigilantes have appropriately banned the Bible and hundreds of other titles from younger student populations around our state, isn’t it time to start our own Salem witch trials? You can almost bet your boots: That will be next.

The author is a retired novelist, columnist and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol, and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog.