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For the last week or so we’ve told you about books offered by the Iowa City Library’s “Bookmobile.” The bookmobile makes weekly stops at at least seven elementary schools in Iowa City. There is some speculation about whether it is intentional the bookmobile offers a number of titles that are prohibited from being offered in the school libraries.
But Iowa City isn’t the only public library with a bookmobile that appears to be skirting the law as it relates to keeping inappropriate materials out of children’s hands. First, it is important to understand what is defined as not age-appropriate for Iowa schools. Here is the legal definition of what is not age-appropriate for Iowa school materials:
“Any sexual contact between two or more persons by any of the following:
1. Penetration of the penis into the vagina or anus.
2. Contact between the mouth and genitalia or mouth and anus or by contact between the genitalia of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person.
3. Contact between the finger, hand, or other body part of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person, except in the course of examination or treatment by a person licensed pursuant to chapter 148, 148C, 151 or 152.
4. Ejaculation onto the person of another.
5. By use of artificial sexual organs or substitutes therefore in contact with the genitalia or anus.
6. The touching of a person’s own genitals or anus with a finger, hand, or artificial sexual organ or other similar device at the direction of another person.”
It is also illegal to provide materials or instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation to students in grades K-6 in Iowa. But it isn’t stopping the Iowa City Public Library. And it doesn’t appear to be stopping the Ames Public Library.
The Ames “bookmobile” stops weekly at Mitchell School and Sawyer School on Mondays. It visits St. Cecilia School on Tuesday and Edwards School on Wednesday. Mitchell, Sawyer and Edwards all appear to be elementary schools. St. Cecilia is a Catholic school.
Perhaps the most infamous book of the debate on whether sexually explicit materials should be available in schools is the book called “Gender Queer.”
Three years ago The Iowa Standard did something that no other media outlet in Iowa has done — at least to our knowledge. Instead of “claiming” or “explaining” the graphic nature of “Gender Queer,” we just let the book speak for itself.
We published pictures of 11 pages from the book. The mainstream media will not do that because if they did, it would blow up the entire Democrat/mainstream media defense of the book. If you haven’t seen the pages, view them
here. But be warned, they are not appropriate.
But don’t take my word for it. Don’t take Iowa Republican legislators or Gov. Kim Reynolds’ word for it.
Shortly after we published those pages of “Gender Queer,” Google flagged the story as containing “adult sexual content.” Facebook said the pages violate its community standards on sexual activity.
Surely we all agree Google and Facebook are not fronts for right-wing conspiracy groups.
Even the author of the book said it is not for children.
But the book is readily available at the Ames Public Library “Bookmobile.”
So while the book is obviously not legal to be inside Iowa school libraries, it is being offered at Ames elementary schools through the city’s public library bookmobile.
I just spoke with the Cedar Rapids Public library. They do not use a book mobile but acknowledged that all of their material, including sexually explicit graphic novels, explicit audio books, and even sexually explicit streamed video is available to all library card holders, regardless of age. They even said if a small child tries to check out obviously adult content no one would stop them – because, as they said, that would be illegal.
So now, in their minds, unsupervised children have a legal right to access any sexual material they feel like.
Like other libraries Ive talked to, they try to push the responsibility back on the parents. They ignore the fact that the kids can access this material while sitting in any school room, or on any cell phone, or after being dropped off by the bus after school while mom and dad are still at work.
We have building codes that require railings around backyard decks and fences around swimming pools precisely because not every parent can be 100% vigilant, 100% of the time. For the libraries to pretend they have no reasonability for the content resident children access is simply irrational and irresponsible.
If adults of the State saw the kind of sexual content that children can access from our libraries the vast majority would be outraged. The fact that our public libraries would willfully provide that kind of outrageous material to our kids should tell us all we need to know about who is running our libraries and what their agenda is.
The libraries need to issue age restricted library cards
[…] the last week or so we’ve told you about books offered by the Iowa City Library’s “Bookmobile.” The bookmobile makes weekly stops at at least seven elementary schools in […]
I’m a lifelong conservative. I believe that parents should, well, parent. It’s not the library’s job to tell your kid what to read and what to avoid, that is distinctly up to the parents. Libraries should have books about all topics and parents should manage their own kids.
And when the parent is not with the kid when the kid visits the bookmobile because it is stopped at their elementary school?
I just found out my child will be reading “Ban This Book” in 5th grade. It is a book banned in Florida and Pleasant Valley decided it would be a great book to read as a class. I’m not happy. I’ve been told it is a parent’s job to decide but now the school has decided my child will be exposed to content she should not be at 11 years old.