VA Senate Kills Bill Requiring Parental Consent To Check Out Sexually Explicit Books

RICHMOND, VA — A Virginia Senate committee rejected a bill on Thursday that would have required written parental consent for students to check out books and other instructional materials from school libraries that describe or depict sexual acts.

Sen. Bill DeSteph, a Republican from Virginia Beach, introduced SB 275 in response to a campaign by conservative parents across the state to ban library books in high school libraries that contain passages or illustrations describing sexual acts.

Parents have focused on one book, in particular, “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” an LGBTQ-themed graphic memoir published in 2019 and written by Maia Kobabe that contains illustrations showing nudity and depicting Kobabe's sexual fantasies.

In Thursday’s 8-7 vote, Democrats on the Senate Education and Health Committee succeeded in killing the bill. Democrats hold a 9-6 majority on the committee.

One Democrat on the committee, Lynwood Lewis, who represents the Eastern Shore of Virginia, voted with Republicans in support of the bill. Another Democrat who occasionally sides with Republicans on education issues, Sen. Chap Petersen of Fairfax, voted to kill the bill, The Associated Press reported.

“I don’t think we should be involved in micromanaging school libraries.” Petersen said. “The problem is that you’re going to sweep up books that you don’t intend to sweep up.”

Since his inauguration on Jan. 15, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has made “parental rights” a top priority of his administration, including giving parents the power to decide what their high school-aged children read in school libraries.

In last year’s governor’s election, Youngkin, ran an advertisement showing a parent who supported banning Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” from high schools. The book by the Nobel Prize-winning author speaks in explicit terms about race and sex.

SEE ALSO: Loudoun Schools Remove 'Gender Queer' From High School Libraries

An earlier version of DeSteph’s bill stated that schools will be required to get “prior written parental consent before a student is permitted to check out from the school library any such printed or audiovisual materials that could be considered grooming video or materials,” as that term is defined in Virginia law.

Virginia law defines grooming video or materials to means “a cartoon, animation, image, or series of images depicting a child engaged in the fondling of the sexual or genital parts of another or the fondling of his sexual or genital parts by another, masturbation, sexual intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, anilingus, anal intercourse, or object sexual penetration.”

In the updated version of the bill that still failed to advance in the Senate, the language was changed to read: "School must receive prior written parental consent before a student is permitted to check out from the school library any such printed or audiovisual materials that depict a child engaged in the fondling of the sexual or genital parts of another or the fondling of the his sexual or genital parts by another, masturbation, sexual intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, anilingus, anal intercourse, or object sexual penetration.”

School librarians worried that parental involvement and public comment period provisions, as proposed in the original version of the bill, would delay the timeline for adding new books to libraries over the summer, the Virginia Mercury reported Thursday.

Opponents of the bill also argued that school librarians are already trained in collection management, and that, under current rules, parents can ask their local school boards to review any books they find controversial.

“We follow best practice by reviewing books in their entirety, not by taking passages out of context and only then deciding their appropriateness,” said Kelly Passek, a middle school librarian who was named the 2021 Virginia School Librarian of the Year, in a hearing last week, the Virginia Mercury reported.

At a hearing on the bill, DeSteph, the bill's chief sponsor, said he had glanced through some books that he finds objectionable and read other books in their entirety. “I truly don’t understand the educational value of any of them, with the exception of ‘Lolita,’ which is an international literary work of art," he said.

Sen. John Cosgrove, a Republican from Chesapeake, said Democrats are failing to act on the message sent by Virginians who voted for Youngkin in the November 2021 election, according to the AP. “This last election showed us parents want to have more control over what's happening in schools,” he said.

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