Idaho Freedom Foundation president Wayne Hoffman issued the following statement regarding Gov. Brad Little vetoing House Bill 314, the School and Library Protection Act:
We are dismayed and outraged that Little would choose to betray children and families like this, choosing instead to give in to the pressure from the special interests that have been all too eager to expose children to harmful materials.
His veto statement recycled the same tired arguments that had already been negated in debates on the House and Senate floors. This veto is a concession to the same special interests that seem to have a vested interest in putting obscene, graphic, and pornographic material into the hands of children to begin with.
As you know, the Idaho Freedom Foundation has been exposing obscene materials in Idaho libraries for years. In 2021, we warned the public and lawmakers about a woke non-profit coordinating with the Idaho Commission for Libraries to disseminate books to toddlers about gender identity and sexual orientation.
In 2022, we demonstrated how direct cash grants from Washington were being used to circumvent local control of libraries. We exposed how libraries were stocking their shelves with graphic children’s books promoting, among other things, kinky sex, sexual deviancy, and early sex among children.
In 2023, we brought national attention to how Idaho public school libraries have become facilitators for a far-left agenda that warps both sex and gender through exposure to pornographic material as well as noxious propaganda. We showed how a system of reviewers, stakeholders, federal agencies, and public employees facilitates the provision of inappropriate books for minors in our public schools and libraries.
When House Bill 666 was killed in a Senate committee drawer last year, the people of Idaho responded by electing the most conservative Senate in a generation. Now H314 passed both the House and Senate, but was killed by a governor too afraid of entrenched interests to do what is right.
With your support, we will continue to expose what is being smuggled into our public schools and the children’s sections of our libraries as well as the special interests who enable it.
