Mercedes Schneider wonders when or if the so-called “Moms for Liberty” will get involved in banning the Bible from America’s classrooms and libraries. Should young children be exposed to racy sexual content?
She writes:
Moms for Liberty– a misnomer for Far-right Moms (and Others) for Censorship of What We Disapprove– is into banning books that is loves to tag as “pornography.” The group originally started in Florida in 2021 and having some pretty tight Republican connections(see here also); the October 13, 2023, Salon notes that Moms for Liberty (M4L) is “a GOP darling” pushing a far-right GOP agenda:
A GOP darling, its agenda includes filling school boards with conservatives, a boilerplate Republican strategy for winning wider elections. Under its “parents’ rights” banner, Moms for Liberty pushes core conservative policies: bans on public school education about sex, diversity, LGBTQ issues and the role of race and racism in society.
An April 2023 NewsNation article states that M4L doesn’t want to ban books; it just wants to “prohibit ‘pornographic materials’ from school libraries.”
That got me to wondering whether M4L has ever come on strong against the bible.
I’m guessing not since, well, far-right folks might just implode at the thought.
For example, there’s this situation with Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:30 – 38, NIV):
Open the link to read about another Bible story that will shock you. Worried about sexually explicit materials? Read the Bible!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t find these stories nearly as shocking as is, say, the story of the slaughter of the Midianites (or any of the hundreds of other such glorifications in the Bible of mass murder with God on one’s side).
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In light of the recent choice for Speaker of the House, a fundamentalist religious extremist member of the American Taliban:
We suffer greatly from a lack of education in our schools about prehistory and the earliest of ancient history. For example, things would be a lot different if people in general understood that humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before ONE TINY GROUP OF THEM, quite late in the human story, INVENTED patriarchal monotheism.
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If you want to find out exactly how utterly distorted this guy’s worldview and understanding of history is, see this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-speaker-johnson-linked-mass-shootings-to-feminism-no-fault-divorce-in-taped-sermon/ar-AA1j3jxi?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=a3fdaa641ba24a24bbf2d0b96d328a1e&ei=30
Truly scary because he believes this nonsense AND is quite articulate. He will not be satisfied until we are back in the freaking Middle Ages.
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His wife is just as bad and bizarre. It seems they are both utterly detached from reality.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-johnson-wife-kelly-johnson-christian-counseling-phlegmatic-2023-10?op=1
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All I know is when I was young, my grandfather turned to me one day and said, “I have read the Bible and boy is there a lot of sex and drinking in there.”
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And a lot of violence. And a lot of really primitive “laws.”
A lot of people do no understand that the Old Testament is a library of books written and compiled over 1,500 years. In the oldest of the writings that ended up incorporated into books of the Bible by ancient Hebrew recensionists/redactors, the Hebrews are not monotheists, though they claim that their god is more powerful than are the gods of other peoples.
It always astonishes me how little Christians know of their own sacred texts.
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You are correct. A true monotheist would believe in the existence of one god. The Hebrews, much like modern christians who see a cosmic battle between God and Satan, were practicing monolatry. They chose the God to whom they would pledge their throth. They believe in many gods, but look to one as their own.
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No, you are misinterpreting me. In the oldest stories, the Hebrews recognize the gods of neighboring peoples as real but hold that theirs is the best. In the story of the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal, the priests of Baal are able to call upon their god to perform miracles, but the ones performed by Yahweh are better. LOL.
But yeah, there is the whole “and the sons of God saw the daughters of men” thing. So, they envisioned heaven as populated by these celestial beings–more than one of them.
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Sorry. No. You had me right. Monolatry. That’s exactly what they first practiced. But eventually they adopted monotheism.
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Sorry. I read and responded to your note too quickly and didn’t follow it. My sincere apologies to one who is deeply learned in these matters.
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Your calling me “deeply learned” is quite a compliment. Or did you mean someone else? IN all truth, this was not my idea, but was in a book i never finished reading and lost somewhere. So it goes.
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If you like the Taliban morality police, you will love the new House Speaker. He thinks that we should be ruled by equivalent laws, drawn from the primitive ancient writings of the Hebrews.
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Have you read A.J. Jacob’s book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible??? It’s hilarious.
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Sounds hilarious, Mamie! What a great idea for a book.
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Did he howl at the moon? Psalms 59:14-15 American Standard Version (ASV) And at evening let them return, let them howl like a dog, And go round about the city. They shall wander up and down for food, And tarry all night if they be not satisfied. Just curious.
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“Therefore thou shalt say to them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and vomit, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.”
Jeremiah 25:27
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That Jeremiah was one cheery guy! Life of the party.
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@Bob “The Legend” — Now, now…be careful you are using that word again…EDUCATION. Psalm 137:9, huh. So much to read, study…can’t just “cherry pick” matters of the “heart.” https://www.gotquestions.org/Old-Testament-violence.html
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YIKES!!! The author of this piece of apologetics makes a case for freaking genocide!!!
It doesn’t get more awful and more utterly stupid than this.
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That passage reads as particularly horrific given the recent events in Israel, huh? It always astonished me that the Reaganites and all the Repugnicans in that vein who came after them so hate the Islamic fundamentalists, FOR THEY HOLD EXACTLY THE SAME BELIEFS AND SUPPORT EXACTLY THE SAME POLICIES. There is a terrible, tragic, and utterly ridiculous irony in that. Our Christian Taliban.
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@Bob — exactly. I tried to figure out ISIS (one of my former students, I found out joined ISIS) and basically the end of the world as we know it, to a final battle. I am not that educated on the subject, but lots and lots of violence.
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!!!!!!
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It is possible that Fascist Moms for Liberty that want to control what everyone, that isn’t a fascist, does, may have already deleted any sexual scenes from “THEIR” version of THE BIBLE.
“There are currently over 3,030 versions in over 2,011 languages available digitally on bible.com, versions in nearly 1,900 languages at faithcomesbyhearing.com and a similar number on the American Bible Society’s bibles.org.”
19th Century China even had a Christian Taiping version of the Bible with an added section proclaiming their converted Buddhist, Christian Emperor was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.
“Two official translations of the Bible were subsequently published by the Taipings, in which much alteration was done in order to promote Hong’s brand of theology and beliefs and to remove stories of potential embarrassment for the regime.”
“The revisers were charged with introducing alterations only if they were deemed necessary to be more accurate and faithful to the original Greek and Hebrew texts. In the New Testament alone more than 30,000 changes were made, over 5,000 on the basis of what were considered better Greek manuscripts.”
There’s a reason the Old Testament seriously warns us about False Prophets. Deuteronomy 18:20
I suspect that the false prophets known as Moms for Liberty are going to have a very cold afterlife if there is a hell anything close to Dante’s vision.
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Was that related to the massive Taiping rebellion in the later 19th century?
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“Moms for Liberty pushes core conservative policies: bans on public school education about sex, diversity, LGBTQ issues and the role of race and racism in society.”
No! Those are not “core conservative policies.” Those are reactionary xtian theofascist policies.
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I think the point is that the Bible is a really Good Book. It should be read and appreciated in context, as should be the rest of the good books being banned. God gave us brains.
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Some of us, anyway.
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The hullabaloo over the King James Version (and only that version) being temporarily banned by my district in Utah caused a huge stink. The state legislature needed their fainting couches, that was for sure. Hauled the Board president and superintendent up to Capitol Hill and everything. It was during interim session, no less, but they still exacted their pound of flesh
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Our LGBTQ+ week didn’t go so well at LAUSD. Most teachers were unaware of of the date starting Oct. 9 and there was no discussion of what we were supposed to talk about and teachers were scared of parental complaints. A teacher told me that a parent gave him the Bible and asked him to read it during class. The teacher told the parent they wouldn’t be able to do that. In Florida it’s a 3rd degree Felony for a teacher to pass on sexually inappropriate materials to their students, so I would highly recommend that all Florida teachers steer clear of the Bible due to it’s highly sexual content. Some of it’s stories wouldn’t even be allowed on Pornhub.
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Has “Mein Kampf” been banned anywhere at all by them or their proxies?
Just asking questions here. /s
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