Florida School District Bans Bible Distribution Following Satanist Group Request

After a Satanist group requested to distribute material at a Florida school district, school board members agreed to not allow any outside religious information to be distributed to students.

The decision on behalf of the Orange County School Board bars all religious groups, including Gideons International, from distributing religious material on their school campuses.

The school board said it came to the decision after a New York-based Satanic group requested the ability to distribute a coloring book to children at Orange County schools. According to WPTV, the district decided to ban all religious material out of concern it would receive ridicule by allowing the Satanic pamphlet to be distributed.

"This really has, frankly, gotten out of hand," Orange County School Board chairman Bill Sublette said at a recent meeting, according to WPTV. "I think we've seen a group or groups take advantage of the open forum we've had."

According to the Christian News Network, Sublette went on to say that he had received numerous emails that expressed concern over the Satanist literature being distributed to children.

"In my office alone I had received close to 11,000 emails in one period on this issue, and it gives you an idea of the level of disruption it was causing."

The Christian Post received a statement from Shari Bobinski, senior specialist of media relations for Orange County Public Schools, regarding the policy change.

"The proposed changes include: materials of a denominational, sectarian, religious, political and partisan nature shall not be permitted to be distributed. The policy changes are modeled after similar policies in Miami-Dade Public Schools and Broward County Public Schools," read the statement.