Texas House Bill 900 entered into effect on September 1, and on 13 December the Texas State Board of Education voted 13-1 to adopt new standards requiring schools to ban sexually explicit content and limit sexually relevant materials in school libraries.
The new guidelines require local libraries to recognize parents as the “primary decision makers regarding their student’s access to library material” and bar the “possession, acquisition, and purchase of harmful material” such as “sexually explicit” content.
Booksellers are now required to rate the books they sell to school districts based on sexual content. Vendors may not sell books deemed sexually explicit to school districts, and the districts may not purchase from that don’t use state-mandated ratings.
While books deemed “sexually explicit” may not be kept in school libraries, those deemed “sexually relevant” may, and students are allowed to borrow them with their parents’ permission, i.e. written consent.
According to the Federalist, in August, the Texas State Library & Archives Commission cut ties with the American Library Association (ALA) over the group’s aggressive far-left agenda. When the ALA elected its new president last year, she openly declared herself a “Marxist lesbian” and pledged to wage war on parents trying to protect their children from woke LGBT ideology.
Republican State Representative Brian Harrison wrote that “The ALA works against parents by fighting to keep pornographic materials in public libraries under the guise of opposing ‘censorship.’” Representative Jared Patterson, who authored HB 900, had previously written a letter to the Texas State Board of Education, stating: “The materials I personally fought are outrageous and so explicit in nature that news programs could not even show the images on screen or read passages over the radio due to FCC standards.”
But the ALA doesn’t seem to mind that, and is adamant to allow children access to explicit materials which may not be read out loud at school board meetings, for instance, or aired on television.
In April, the ALA published a list of 13 books it ranked the “most challenged” books of 2022, celebrating “the brave authors whose work challenges readers with stories that disrupt the status quo.” All the books on the list feature sexually explicit material, and some are nothing less than pornographic, and all are marketed to teenagers and young adults.
State library groups from at least eight other states have also severed ties with the ALA, or are being urged to do so by state lawmakers. Still, the ALA does not even try to hide the fact that it is resolved to fight religious Americans over their parental rights. It seems that gender ideology is the hill they want to die on. Decent and freedom-loving Americans are fine with that.