Administrators at a hotel run by Iowa State University have given the boot to Bibles in their guest rooms after protest from a religious separatist group.
The push to remove the books began when a guest at the Hotel Memorial Union complained to Freedom From Religion Foundation about the “unwelcome religious propaganda in the bedside table,” according to a local NBC News affiliate.
The foundation, a nonprofit which advocates the separation of church and state, said the hotel is part of the Iowa public university system and, as such, cannot legally place the Bibles in the room. Doing so, the group argued, would constitute a support of one religion over another.
Starting March 1, the traditional Bibles in the nightstands will be no more, the hotel decided. The 52-room hotel will now confine its Bibles to its downstairs library and public reading room, the affiliate reported.
“We’re delighted to see reason and the Constitution prevailing,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, the foundation’s co-president, told the Blaze. “We can all sleep easier knowing secularism is being honored at our public universities.”
Iowa State is the second university the foundation has targeted in recent weeks. In January, the group prodded the University of Wisconsin-Extension, a facility of the state’s public university system, to also remove Bibles from all guest rooms at its conference center.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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