District 53 Representative Dean Fisher (Republican)

This past session, we passed a bill to ensure that all books in Iowa school libraries are age appropriate. In recent years, Iowans have found examples of pornographic material in their children’s school libraries. And shockingly, some Iowa school districts have been reluctant to remove them, resulting in the Legislature stepping in to pass a new standard so that schools have clear guidance on what is acceptable.

If you have seen the news from Urbandale School District this week about the list of 374 books they say need to be reviewed due to the new school library book policy, then it’s important you read my newsletter this week to get the facts and the full picture. The list can be found on the Des Moines Register website.

We were very careful in how we crafted this legislation. Our bill stated that age appropriate books do not include any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act. A sex act is already defined in Iowa code.

I apologize for the graphic nature of the following description, but it’s important to know exactly what is in the bill. This kind of explicit description is only necessary because of the poor judgment of a few in our public schools.

A sex act is defined, in part, as: “penetration of the penis into the vagina or anus; contact between the mouth and genitalia or by contact between the genitalia of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person; contact between the finger or hand of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person.”

The Urbandale School District released a list of books they believe need to be reviewed and possibly removed from school libraries due to this new policy. Among those books are old standards such as “1984” by George Orwell, “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway, and “Ulysses” by James Joyce.

Their list is, I believe, purposefully overbroad to make a political point. I think our Education Chairman Skyler Wheeler explained this issue quite well. Here’s what he had to say:

“The Education Committee worked very carefully to craft this legislation. Anyone who has actually read the bill and read the definition in the bill for a sex act knows that the Urbandale School District is just playing a political game with their recently released list of books. It’s unbelievable to me that some of these school districts are having such a hard time removing sexually explicit material from their library. This is quite simple to me. Porn doesn’t belong in school libraries. Books that don’t contain porn can remain on the shelves.”

Also on the Urbandale list of questionable books was the book “Fifty Shades of Grey,” an erotic romance novel. Any rational adult would have to ask themselves why a public school library would have this book on its shelves in the first place. And of course on the Urbandale list are many titles having to do with Gender Identity, so many that it’s clear that the library was pushing an agenda on the children of that district.

Remember, the bill states that books that have graphic descriptions or images of a sex act do not belong in schools. After reading the definition of sex act, I hope you can clearly see that the Urbandale School District’s list contains many books that do not fall under this new standard.

I have discussed this issue of inappropriate books with several of the Superintendents in this legislative district and I am encouraged by their efforts to protect our children from these inappropriate books.

However, the fact that other school districts see this as an opportunity to try and make a mockery of the legislation by including books that are clearly not an issue is disappointing. Such behavior leaves many of our parents rightfully concerned about whether or not they can trust the public schools to protect their children.

Our intention is simple. We want pornographic materials out of school libraries. I still cannot understand why these urban and suburban school districts disagree.

Dean Fisher, a Republican from Montour, represents District 53 in the Iowa House of Representatives.