BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. -- The Bible will stay on the shelves of public school libraries in the Brooklyn Center school district.
The school board of the suburban Minneapolis district voted unanimously Monday night to reject a Brooklyn Center man's request that the Bible be removed because he considers passages to be obscene and violent.
The announcement of the board's decision was greeted with cheers from a crowd of about 600 people, many of whom waved their Bibles in the air in appreciation.
But Gene Kasmar was unrecalcitrant about his stand, saying the board 'caved in to community pressure and religious prejudice.'
'I am looking at the book as a whole, from the anti-gentile suggestions of the Old Testament to the anti-Semitic sympathies of the New Testament,' he said.
'This challenge is not about religion. This challenge is about a book.
'I think a lot of people would agree there is a real role that censorship plays, in matters of national security...and young people.'
Kasmar's efforts to have the Bible banned from Brooklyn Center schools fired up fundamental Christians who brought in the Rev. Pat Robertson's top legal adviser, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice in Virginia Beach, Va.
'We think that there's an attempt to duplicate this process elsewhere,' Sekulow said. 'If we can send a message here in Brooklyn Center, it can reverberate throughout the nation. I think this was a test.'
