Bible Removal From Public Schools Sought By South FL Activist

FLORIDA — A self-proclaimed “political stunt activist” in South Florida wants Christian Bibles banned from public classrooms statewide.

Chaz Stevens' movement to ban the Bible in schools follows the Florida Department of Education's ban of 54 math textbooks for referencing what it considers prohibited topics — critical race theory, Common Core and social-emotional learning — and Gov. Ron DeSantis signing House Bill 1467 into law, giving parents more say in their school district’s instructional materials, library books and textbooks.

Over the past week, Stevens, an atheist who founded the Mount Jab Church of Mars activist group, has written letters to 63 Florida school district superintendents requesting that their school systems “immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library and any instructional material.”

The Deerfield Beach man shared a copy of the letter sent to Sarasota County Schools superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen on Sunday with Patch. He said the letter matches those sent to all 63 districts he's contacted.

“Additionally, I also seek the banishment of any book that references the Bible,” he wrote. “While you’re at it, please consider removing those insipid ‘In God We Trust’ signs thumbtacked to the wall.”

Stevens laid out seven areas of concern behind his request to remove the Bible from public schools, including mentions that may not be age appropriate or depict killing children, bestiality, rape, "wokenness," and cannibalism.

“Is this the message we want to teach our children? If you rape a woman, the father has to give you 50 silver pieces,” he asked.

In the letter, Stevens also wrote, “As the Bible casually references (i.e. Matthew 15:19) such topics as murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication ... do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?”

His primary goal in sending these requests to superintendents is to cause “digestive distress,” he told Patch.

When it comes to laws he opposes, he uses lawmakers’ “own hypocrisy” and policies against them, he said.

"I’m using the law as crafted by Tallahassee," Stevens said. "I’m not breaking the law. If they told me, 'You’re breaking statute 14 and you can’t do this,’ I’d stop.”

He added, “I want them to give me the same professional quality review they gave to the math books and whatever baby book they just banned."

A longtime IT professional who’s worked as a technology product developer for IBM, the Coca Cola Company and the Walt Disney World Company, his emails to superintendents all have tracking enabled on them.

“So, I’m able to see who’s opening what,” Stevens said. “Lake County — one of the first I sent — they got their letter Friday. They opened it 37 times. Broward County hasn’t bothered to open it yet.”

Stevens has also been closely following ongoing contentious conversations surrounding the banning of books in Indian River County. Jennifer Pippen, leader of the conservative group Moms for Liberty’s Indian River chapter, even filed a criminal complaint about some books’ content, alleging some of the works were pornographic, with the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office, according to TC Palm.

The sheriff’s office report, available at the Adventures in Censorship blog, found that no law was violated.

“There is nothing further to report. This case is cleared unfounded, no crime occurred,” the report read.

Now, Stevens said he plans to file criminal complaints with law enforcement agencies in each county where he contacted school superintendents “alleging that the Bible violates child obscenity” laws and asking them to review the religious text.

He’s also applied for a July 1 burn permit from the Tallahassee fire chief, in accordance with state law, he said. “We’re going to burn the living (expletive) out of a stack of Bibles up in Tallahassee.”

For years, he’s used stunts like these to protest legislation and raise awareness of various issues.

In 2013, a Nativity was put on display at the state Capitol building, his holiday exhibit representing Festivus — a fake holiday from the 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld” — was allowed in Tallahassee.

Stevens built the 6-foot Festivus pole using empty Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans and PVC pipe, according to NPR. The made-up holiday also calls for people to celebrate with an “airing of grievances,” where they share their disappointments and issues from the previous year.

In 2015, he launched a project called “Satan or Silence” after listening to a religious invocation before a Dania Beach City Commission meeting.

“They said ‘Jesus Christ’ 23 times in under two minutes,” he said.

That’s when Stevens learned “to flip bureaucracy against itself and use the weight of bureaucracy against itself,” he said.

He told the city commission that he was a Satanist seeking equal protection and rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and asked if he could perform a Satanic prayer before a commission meeting. He made similar requests in other South Florida cities.

As a result, several cities, including Dania Beach, Deerfield Beach, Coral Springs and Delray Beach, all dropped prayers from their meetings, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

More recently, in December, he created another non-tradition holiday display in the state Capitol rotunda — cardboard cutouts of Dr. Anthony Fauci dressed as Santa Claus and Fox News show host Tucker Carlson dressed as the grim reaper.

He’s miffed that the state hasn’t approved any other displays he’s submitted since then, including images of DeSantis on the cover of Playboy, a blank sheet of foam board, and sex toys painted with the faces of DeSantis, Rep. Matt Gaetz and former President Donald Trump.

His next step is working with an attorney to figure out how to get his displays approved in Tallahassee.

“I’m a First Amendment activist. You’re screwing with my First Amendment rights,” Stevens said. “Did you not think I might take that seriously?”