Arizona school board member complains that Biology textbook violates her "religious rights." Decides to cut out offending pages. A little thing we call "censorship."

Courtesy of The New York Times:  

The textbook, the one with the wide-eyed lemur peering off the cover, has been handed out for years to students in honors biology classes at the high schools here, offering lessons on bread-and-butter subjects like mitosis and meiosis, photosynthesis and anatomy. 

But now, the school board in this suburb of Phoenix has voted to excise or redact two pages deep inside the book — 544 and 545 — because they discuss sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, including mifepristone, a drug that can be used to prevent or halt a pregnancy. 

A law passed two years ago in Arizona requires schools to teach “preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption” over abortion, and the school board decided that those pages were in violation of this law — even though the Arizona Education Department, which examined the book for compliance, found that they were not. 

The controversy has turned into a referendum on the 2012 law, with supporters saying the textbook content cannot be removed fast enough and opponents crying foul for any number of reasons: technical, ethical, pedagogical. But the Gilbert school board is moving forward, trying to figure out how to remove the material in question — by way of black markers or scissors, if need be — despite resistance from parents, residents, the American Civil Liberties Union and even the district’s superintendent. 

“It comes down to, it’s the law, and we need to be in compliance with the law,” said Julie Smith, a member of the Gilbert Public Schools governing board and also a parent who raised concerns about the book. “If people don’t like the law, they need to take it up with their state legislator. I don’t write the law. It’s my job to uphold it.”

The offending pages.

By the way that Julie Smith woman is apparently the driving force behind this censorship.

And here are her reasons why:

Ms. Smith, the school board member and parent, said she had been driving her family home from church back in January when her son told her about what was in the textbook. “I almost drove off the road,” she said. 

“I’m Catholic; we do not contracept,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a grave sin.” By including those pages in the curriculum, she added, “you have violated my religious rights.”

"We do not contracept?"  Well considering this woman's heavy handed parenting style that's probably too bad.

As for violating her religions rights? Well nobody's religious rights should have any impact whatsoever on what is taught in a public school classroom.

And in my opinion if science classes are taught in a factual manner than they should violate somebody's religious beliefs almost daily.

By the way you know that removing these pages, or using a sharpie to black them out, is going to do NOTHING to stop students from accessing them. It's called the internet folks, and if the kids want to read them (And after this you they all will.), then by gosh they will do exactly that.