Here’s another passage from the Hebrew Scriptures that is extremely inappropriate for children although many others are cited in this thread:
While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may have intercourse with him.” 23 And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. 24 Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them, but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” 25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. 26 As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light.
27 In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was the woman, his concubine, lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. 28 “Get up,” he said to her, “we are going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey, and the man set out for his home. 29 When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.
What about kids who experience SA and then come across passages like this?
“If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, 24 you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
“If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged and seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, 29 the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her, he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.
It’s not just the fact that it’s sexually explicit, but the sexual violence and promotion of rape/rape culture throughout the Bible make it extremely inappropriate for children for that reason.
Rampant bigotry also makes it inappropriate for schools.
The New Testament has toxic passages centered around gender roles that would be questionable to have around in a school setting, especially given the fact that it’s not viewed as just some other book containing the views of ancient bigots. Do we want to promote sexism in our schools? I doubt it.
Paul’s Problematic Views of WomenOther Problematic New Testament Writings on WomenThis certainly isn’t stuff that I would want a young daughter reading. Well, it’s not something I wanted my son to read, either, not without him being mature enough to understand context. I wanted him to view women as full equals and any relationship he might have with a woman, if he’s straight, as an equal partnership with no idiotic headship business. Of course, I also had concerns about some of the
passages people cite to uphold homophobia as well. A couple of those passages are in the New Testament. They aren’t so clear cut as people make them out to be, but just reading available translations, kids would likely come to bigoted conclusions, especially if there’s generational bigotry in their family as there often is.
29 Jun 2025, 7:17 pm
