Donkey Ding Dong Horse Goop

BREAKFAST BIBLE STUDY

Ezekiel 23:20 (NIV)

2/16/25

“Christian nationalism is just fascism cloaked in religious garb” – Grace Pecker

Grace had a headache, so she picked a short passage for breakfast Bible study this morning and asked me how this would be appropriate in public schools. Christian laughed when he read the passage and then pushed the Bible to me to have me read:

“‘There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses,’ Ezekiel 23:20.”

“If you were a teacher, would you want to have to explain what emissions were?” Grace asked. “Let’s imagine this isn’t sex ed, which many Christians do not want taught in school.”

“Emissions?” I asked. “Like from a car?”

“You’ve heard of nocturnal emissions?” Christian asked.

“Mom had punishments for those!” I said.

“I’m going back to bed,” Grace said.

“But, wait, isn’t Ezekiel about Babylon and Egypt and stuff like that, and Isreal turning away from God?” I asked. “I think it’s just a metaphor or something.”

“Yes,” Christian said. “Israel was a small nation, just trying to survive. They made political alliances, which often meant taking on the civic duty of bowing to foreign gods.”

“What foreign gods?”

“Well, tribes and nations had their own gods back then,” Christian said. “The idea of a universal God didn’t come around until way later. To make political alliances back then, tribes had to pay tribute to the gods of those other nations. Israel was only supposed to worship Yahweh.”

“I bet God didn’t like that,” I said.

“Not according to Ezekiel,” Christian said.

“I just wanted to talk about the one passage,” Grace called from her room.

“It’s pretty graphic,” I said. “It’s like people having sex with horses and donkeys.”

“Bestiality is the image Ezekiel is presenting,” Christian said.

“Gross.”

“Appropriate for children?”

“Um.”

“If Mom would have heard us using language like this?”

“Punishments.”

In state legislatures across the country, Christian fundamentalists are passing laws meant to force the teaching of the Christian Bible in public schools. From the posting of textually inaccurate iterations of the Ten Commandments on the walls of classrooms to the incorporation of the “Trump Bible” across multiple pedagogical disciplines, these laws and mandates are sweeping the reddest parts of this nation.

The height of hypocrisy is banning books in the name of “protecting children” while mandating one particular book rife with numerous acts of sexual violence and scenes of graphic violence and genocide.

Book bans are dangerous. The Bible is worth reading and exists online and in public school libraries across the country, but proponents of mandating its formal teaching in public schools need to know what it actually says.

Click on any book below to learn more. The yellow one is book one.