Des Moines, Iowa — Books with obscene or graphic sexual content would have to be removed from the libraries in Iowa schools if a bill that’s cleared the Iowa House becomes law.
Republican Representative Brook Boden of Indianola says the bill makes it clear sexually explicit content is not age appropriate for students.
Sixty House Republicans voted for the bill. Three Republicans and all Democrats in the House voted against it. Representative Elinor Levin, a Democrat from Iowa City, says she’s part of the first generation who started learning about sex from the internet.
Representative Sue Cahill, a Democrat from Marshalltown, is a licensed teacher-librarian.
Cahill says it’s the literary value of the book as a whole that puts it on the school library shelf. Boden says the bill provides new guardrails for school library books.
Governor Kim Reynolds has a proposal of her own on school library book policies and the Senate has not yet debated the issue.
