Delta County School District employees in Delta, Colo., placed FFRF literature, along with material from the Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers and The Satanic Temple, in schools for students to take. In early April, FFRF sought the distribution to protest a previous bible distribution in the school.
However, the School District complained about two FFRF pamphlets: “An X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible” and “What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?” Both of them were limited to just the local high schools.
The School District objected to the cartoon cover of “An X-Rated Book,” which shows a bible groping a young woman.
“It is inappropriate in a school setting; we would not allow any of the high school students to wear or otherwise display such a cartoon,” says School District Attorney Andrew Clay. “Why would we allow them to carry it in the building? It may also qualify as hate literature, demeaning women.”
But district officials are misconstruing the cover.
“The School District misses the point entirely,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The cover image is a feminist cartoon whose message is that the bible itself demeans women.”
FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel also dismisses the School District’s argument.
“The idea that the pamphlet qualifies as hate literature is absurd, and if you’re banning it on those grounds, then the district must ban the bible too,” he says. “If you actually examine the pamphlet, you will see that it is comprised almost entirely of bible quotes. There is absolutely no way for the district to exclude the pamphlet and allow the bible to be distributed.”
This gets to the larger point of why FFRF insisted that it be allowed to dispense its literature. In spite of repeated FFRF requests, the Delta County School District refused to stop the Gideons from passively distributing bibles in the local public schools. Since the School District has told FFRF that it will keep on giving the Gideons access, FFRF made sure other perspectives got heard, too.
“The school has no ability to censor any materials based on their viewpoint once it opens a forum,” says Seidel. “That is why open forums in public schools are such a bad idea. If you want to open a forum, you do not get to determine what is acceptable and not.”
As a compromise, FFRF put stickers over the cover of “An X-Rated Book,” stating “censored by order of Delta County Schools.” The organization is of the view that the attempt at censorship will likely backfire, since students are more likely to take “forbidden fruit.”
The School District also limited the distribution of “What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?” to local high schools, since it deems the cover, a famous depiction of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer, to be a “pornographic picture.”
