Iowa Governor Signs Education Law on Book Bans, LGBTQ Teaching

From the Des Moines Register:

Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed a sweeping education law that orders the removal from schools of books that contain sex acts and restricts teaching about LGBTQ topics.

Iowa Republican lawmakers combined several of their top priorities for education into the wide-ranging Senate File 496, which Reynolds signed in a private event on Friday.

The law will ban school books with descriptions or depictions of sex acts; prohibit instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation before seventh grade; require schools to notify parents if a student requests to use new pronouns; and enshrine the “constitutionally protected right” for parents to make decisions for their children.

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Teachers and school librarians will need to sort through their books to remove any that include a visual depiction or description of a sex act. Iowa law specifically defines “sex acts” as a list of explicit actions between two or more people.

School and library organizations are warning that many books long available on school library shelves could be banned — far beyond the few, controversial titles that have made news in recent years such as “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George Johnson.

ps condemned the law on Friday, calling it discriminatory and harmful.

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