Could the Bible be the next book banned in schools? A parent thinks so.

Rabbi Barry Silver agrees with Gov. Ron DeSantis that the school system shouldn’t be used to “indoctrinate” children.

That’s why he’s now one of several activists across the state who have asked that the Bible be removed from public schools, arguing that it contains the very language that the governor has vowed to protect children from and to give parents the authority to challenge.

Last year, DeSantis approved the Parental Rights in Education Act and a “curriculum transparency” bill, House Bill 1467, two measures under his “Year of the Parent” aimed at giving parents “fundamental rights to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their children” and at preserving “the rights of parents to make decisions about what materials their children are exposed to in school,” the governor’s office wrote in news releases about the bills.

The two laws say classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited from kindergarten through eighth grade and must be “age appropriate” in 9th through 12th grade, and school districts are required to allow parents to have a say in what reading materials are available in libraries and in classrooms.

DeSantis has made such issues a cornerstone of his budding 2024 presidential campaign. At a rally in South Carolina recently, he touted Florida’s policy on parental rights as an opponent in the crowd called him a fascist.

“Unfortunately, there’s bad stuff that’s getting into the schools. There’s pornography that’s getting in the schools. So the parents have had to blow the whistle in Florida,” DeSantis said before he was interrupted by the heckler.

Silver said he thinks the Bible is one of the pornographic books in schools, a book that includes “graphic accounts” of violence and rape, executing gay people and women, discussion of gender and sexuality issues, among other issues, he said.

Whether satire or an attempt at playing tit-for-tat with conservative lawmakers, petitions to ban the Bible have been recently lodged in several other counties and states.

“I don’t suggest banning anything. I don’t like banning books,” Silver said during public comment at the Palm Beach County School Board meeting on June 14. “But if you’re going to start banning books, you better do it even-handedly, otherwise what you’re doing is censorship.”

There were more attempts to censor library materials in 2022 alone than in 2021, 2020 and 2019 combined, according to data from the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. In 2022, there were 1,269 demands to censor library materials, nearly double the 729 demands in 2021.

All 13 of the top challenged books last year were contested because of LGBTQIA+ content or claims of sexually explicit content, according to the ALA’s list. The No. 1 challenged book was “Gender Queer: A memoir” by Maia Kobaba, followed by “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, both non-fiction works about the authors’ experiences as queer people.

But challenges to the Bible aren’t new, the ALA’s data show. It was among the top 10 challenged books in 2015, ranking in sixth place. It hasn’t made the organization’s top 10 list before or since.

Silver, an attorney whose website says he is a “social activist Rabbi-rouser,” filed a written request on June 14 to have a hearing before the Palm Beach County School Board on his Bible ban request, after it was denied by the principal of Olympic Heights Community High School and Superintendent Michael Burke.

School Board members did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Spokespersons for the governor did not return an email seeking comment.

Silver, whose two sons graduated from Olympic Heights Community High, asked the school’s principal in April for the removal of “any and all Bibles” that may be in the high school, according to written correspondence he shared with the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The school district’s online library catalog shows Olympic Heights Community High School has one of two copies of the King James Version available. The second copy was lost.

Among other titles available are: “The Bible: a literary study” by John H. Gottcent, which is described as “a critical evaluation of the Bible as an expression of culture, language, and art,” “Bad Girls of the Bible: And What We Can Learn from Them,” “The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language,” the Catholic Study Bible and the Oxford Annotated Bible.

Silver sent nearly verbatim complaint letters to DeSantis and Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg in March. He said he did not receive a response.

Per the district’s policy, a committee reviewed the Bible after Silver’s challenge and decided it would stay, according to letters provided by Silver. He appealed the school’s decision to Superintendent Burke in late May.

In his May 19 letter to Burke, Silver attached 13 pages of passages to make his point. He organized the texts under headings like “child abuse,” “sex trafficking,” “death penalty for homosexuals” and eight other types of “harmful passages.” Three pages of text were grouped under “antisemitism in Christian scripture.”

“I guess in Palm Beach County you can teach kids all about these terrible things, as long as it’s in the Bible,” Silver told the Sun Sentinel.

Burke in a June 7 letter affirmed the school’s decision to keep the Bible in its library based on the district’s policy, basing his decision on the “freedom from stereotypes, bias, prejudice or distortion” criteria. Burke added in his response that the district has no authority over others in the state and that studying the Bible and religion is allowed in schools under state law.

Silver said his hearing before the School Board will be July 19.

“It’s obvious that that law was passed in order to indoctrinate students, and Gov. DeSantis says the purpose is to prevent indoctrination, to prevent children from being indoctrinated,” Silver said. “But, in fact, he doesn’t mind indoctrination as long as it’s indoctrination into his philosophy.”

Silver years ago filed a lawsuit against the School Board when his sons were in elementary and middle school, alleging in his complaint that the district failed to “properly” teach about evolution, among other allegations. That lawsuit was dismissed. He is also one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last year in Leon County, challenging House Bill 5, the 15-week abortion ban that DeSantis approved last April.

Complaints about the Bible similar to Silver’s are actively being considered and decided on in other counties and states.

Florida Today, Brevard County’s daily newspaper, reported last month that the Bible was included among a list of nearly 300 books anonymously challenged to the county’s school district officials.

Russell Bruhn, a spokesperson for Brevard Public Schools, said in an email that schools that have a copy of any of the challenged books are still in the first step of the review process and a decision should come within the next month.

“It is important to remember that book titles are removed from our libraries routinely for various reasons, mostly because of damage to the book and lack of interest from students. A book that has not been checked out for multiple years has a chance of being removed,” Bruhn wrote.

The Pensacola News Journal reported last October that a resident unsuccessfully challenged the Bible in Escambia County, making arguments similar to Silver’s. It was challenged in one Texas school district in August, the New York Times reported, and the Kansas City Star reported recently that a student submitted a “satirical request” to remove it, which was denied. A school district in Utah removed the Bible from elementary and middle school libraries after a parent’s complaint earlier this month, then reversed course and brought them back after many filed appeals, the Associated Press reported.

And Silver isn’t the only South Floridian known for head-turning antics who has challenged the Bible. Boca Raton resident Chaz Stevens, who has made several local headlines over the years, tried it last year.

NPR, the Washington Post, Business Insider and the Tallahassee Democrat reported last April that Stevens filed tongue-in-cheek petitions to over 60 districts across the state, making many of the same arguments as Silver.

On Friday, school districts across the state were supposed to submit their first annual report to the Department of Education, detailing which materials were objected to and what the objections were, any materials that were removed as a result of the objection and the grade level and course the objected materials were removed from, according to the bill.

School district officials in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade County did not respond to emails asking if they submitted their reports to the Department of Education on Friday afternoon.