BOISE, Idaho (LifeSiteNews) — Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law on Wednesday a measure requiring public libraries to block children’s access to sexually explicit materials, the latest in a string of measures siding with parents over the LGBT lobby.
HB 710 forbids both freestanding and school libraries from giving minors any material “harmful” to them, including visual representations “of a person or portion of the human body that depicts nudity, sexual conduct, or sado-masochistic abuse” or written depictions of “sexual excitement, sexual conduct, or sado-masochistic abuse.”
In the case of items overlooked by staff, libraries must offer a “readily accessible form allowing a person to request review of material” that a patron “considers to be harmful to minors,” which upon review is to be relocated to an adults-only section. Failure to move the material would open up a library to civil suits.
The Idaho Press reports that Little signed the bill on Wednesday, stating that he shares “cosponsors’ desire to keep truly inappropriate library materials out of the hands of minors” while adding that he considers what children can access on phones and smart devices a bigger concern.
Little vetoed a similar measure last year, expressing concern over its enforcement mechanisms and the clarity of its definitions. He said HB 710 “addresses most, not all” of his reservations but that he will be “watching the implementation and outcomes of this legislation very closely.”
The inculcation of gender fluidity, homosexuality, and sexual promiscuity among youth in public education has been a longstanding concern, from libraries to sports team and restroom policy to drag events to ideological classroom materials to even socially “transitioning” troubled children without parental input.
The far-left American Library Association opposes any meaningful limits on children’s access to adult material, stating in its Library Bill of Rights that content “should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation” or “because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval” and that a “person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views,” without any means of restricting access to certain material on the basis of “chronological age.”
Idaho and Little have previously banned gender “transition” procedures for minors, transgender pronoun mandates in schools, males competing in women’s sports, and male students using female restrooms.
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