I hope the Bible is banned.
As a former Utah resident, I have been following the Davis County parent’s petition to ban the Bible from the Davis School District using the recently passed law HB374. This law, which bans books in public schools containing “pornographic or indecent” material, has been used to ban LGBTQIA+ books throughout schools in Utah. Holding the Bible to the same legal standards as queer books and removing it from Utah schools will benefit Utahns as a whole and especially queer youth.
The white, conservative, Christian majority of Utah rarely, if ever, experiences having their fundamental rights taken away at the hands of elected officials. I believe banning the Bible would give this majority an understanding of how the laws passed by their elected officials can negatively affect others different from them. They would hopefully think twice before electing leaders willing to enforce their moral beliefs on others once they have felt the anxieties and traumas of having moral beliefs enforced on them.
I hope the Bible ban would motivate officials to remove HB374 altogether, creating a safer space for queer youth at Utah schools. As a current master’s student studying social work at Long Beach State University, I have provided therapy at a Los Angeles high school and the Long Beach LGBTQ Center. Providing therapy in these spaces has shown me queer youth can thrive in schools where they feel safe, seen, and appreciated which cannot be achieved when books about people like them are banned.
At the LGBTQ Center, I have become painfully aware of the lasting and often debilitating traumas queer adults carry with them from feeling unaccepted as youth. It’s time Utah does better for queer youth. I believe this can start with the ban of a single book.
Mitchell Hale, Long Beach, Calif.
