Louisiana To Pick Official State Book. It’s the King James Bible

The New Orleans Picayune reports on state legislators choice of an official state book.

Representative Thomas Carmody (R-Shreveport), originally filed a bill to declare a specific copy of a Bible, found in the Louisiana State Museum system, the official state book. But by the time he presented the proposal to the committee, he changed language in his legislation to make the generic King James version of the Bible, a text used worldwide, the official state book.

Michael Weil, who heads up the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, said his organization — which is cultural and not religious in nature — hasn’t take a stance on the bill. But the legislation gives him some personal pause. “I think the state should consider a text that is not religious,” he said.

Another story on the same subject from NPR. And opinion from the ACLU: The bill “represents the use of religion to discriminate against Louisianians of minority faiths or who do not adhere to that particular book as part of their belief system. The bill will create more problems than it will solve by telling some Louisianians that their belief system is not full equal,” the state ACLU says.