The Book of Mormon (Not the Musical) May Fall Prey to Utah’s Censorship Law*

R.VanWagoner
8 min readJun 5, 2023

That Pesky Constitution

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Last year, the Utah legislature passed a law “intended to remove ‘sensitive material’ from school libraries and classrooms.” Anyone, including hecklers, can target a school library book for review by a committee to assess whether it contains subjects that are “pornographic or indecent,” as defined by Utah law, or otherwise lacks “serious value,” meaning “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors, taking into consideration the ages of all minors who could be exposed to the material.” Minors in Utah are defined as under the age of 18.

The book ban was backed by Utah Parents United, a conservative parents rights group.

As you might expect and as was the intent, Utah’s “[s]chool librarians and teachers saw a huge spike in review requests after the law was passed, mainly for books that dealt with racial justice, gender ideology, and LGBTQ representation.” Utah School District Bans the Bible for “Vulgarity” and “Violence” (emphasis added).

“In a spectacular self-own for book-banning crusaders, one fed-up parent used [the] new Utah law to raise hell,” challenging the King James Bible as filled with the kinds of information the law was enacted to ban, “pornographic or indecent” material, as…

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R.VanWagoner
R.VanWagoner

Written by R.VanWagoner

Exercising my right not to remain silent. Criminal defense and First Amendment attorney.