Oklahoma City, OK – The Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill designed to protect children from being exposed to sexually explicit library books. Sponsored by Representative Sally Kern, the bill passed by 60-33, and it now heads to the Senate. Liberty Counsel consulted with Rep. Kern regarding the language of HB 2158.

House Bill 2158 states: “The Oklahoma Department of Libraries Board shall not grant or distribute any state funds that are allocated to libraries on a formula basis to any library, library district, or library system unless the library has taken action to place all children and young adult materials that contain homosexual or sexually explicit subject matter in a special area of the library which is separate and apart from the children and young adult sections of the library and the library has a policy in place to limit distribution of the material to adults only.”

Representative Kern said that children deserve a period of “protected innocence” in which they are shielded from sexually explicit material that turns young people into “sex machines.” Last year Laurie Taylor of Fayetteville, Arkansas, brought to light the problem of sexually explicit library books in the Arkansas public school libraries. Some of the books written for children included shocking material that graphically pictured and described sexual intercourse, rape, sadomasochism, group sex, pedophilia, bestiality, and incest between a father and his young daughter. One story in the book Fade, described a person who, while becoming invisible, sees a classmate’s dad paying another student to perform oral sex.

It is not surprising that the American Library Association (ALA) opposes the bill. The ALA also opposed the Children’s Internet Protection Act passed by Congress. This provides that a library may not receive federal assistance to provide internet access unless it installs software to block images that constitute obscenity or child pornography. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in United States v. American Library Association, Inc.

Liberty Counsel President and General Counsel Mathew D. Staver stated: “Exposing children to graphic sexual material at taxpayer expense is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. The content of many books now written for children and easily accessible without the knowledge of their parents is disturbing. Federal, state and local governments are not required to fund libraries that refuse to implement reasonable protections designed to shield children from books that contain obscene or pornographic language or images.”

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