CV NEWS FEED // On May 30, Ohio State Representative Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, introduced a bill that prohibits libraries from distributing books with harmful content to minors without parental permission.
According to a May 31 news release from the Ohio House of Representatives, libraries that continue to violate this prohibition will be stripped of state funding.
“This legislation protects Ohio’s minors and supports the authority of parents to have a say in what their children are consuming,” Cutrona stated in the news release.
The legislation will determine what content is considered “harmful to juveniles” and subsequently requires parental permission, the news release noted.
The proposed legislation comes amid mounting scrutiny of taxpayer-funded libraries for sponsoring “drag queen story hours,” carrying sexually-charged pro-LGBTQ books in library sections designated for children and youth, and putting up sexually-themed displays in those sections during “Pride” months.
For the past two years, CatholicVote has pushed back against those trends through its “Hide the Pride” campaigns.
Hide the Pride is a parent-led initiative that encourages concerned citizens to remove graphic sexual materials from their local libraries by checking them out during the month of June. Hide the Pride participants also write letters to local officials, including library board members, requesting that material they consider inappropriate for children be discontinued from library shelves.
CatholicVote’s Hide the Pride launches again on June 1, for the third year in a row. Readers can find out more about the initiative by clicking here.
