House File 880 (Formerly HF 284) is a bill that seeks to prevent Iowa Libraries from being members of the Iowa Library Association and the American Library Association (ALA) by restricting funds to them if they are dues paying members of these organizations. Those dues are paid for by taxpayer dollars. I’ve received many emails opposing this legislation from people who clearly don’t understand the issues, so it’s worthwhile to devote a bit of time to the subject to clear up the lack of understanding.

While the presumption is that these state and national library organizations are benign associations simply providing support to our local libraries, the reality is far different. Over the years these organizations, like so many others, have been taken over by Democrat leaning political interests that push their own ideologies that are not in line with our Iowa values, and they do so using dues paid for by taxpayers. A prime example of this is the ALA stated goal to “Queer the Catalog,” meaning they want to push “Queer” sexual literature into our local libraries based on the premise that our library cataloging systems are intrinsically biased. Another example of the ALA’s agenda is their stated goal of opposing all attempts to “restrict access…. based on age of library users.” This is of course so they can offer inappropriate sexually oriented materials to our children without parental consent. The Iowa Library Association actually filed an Amicus Brief during a lawsuit against our House File 496 because that bill sought to restrict access by minors to sexually explicit material in schools. And these are just a couple of the issues the ILA and ALA are pushing in the political arena. The Iowa Legislature has worked hard over the past few years to protect our children from obscene materials in our schools and libraries. This bill, HF 880, is aimed at going to the source of many of these ideologies that are being pushed through our local libraries, using taxpayer dollars to do so. I will be pressing to get the bill passed in the House.

Rep. Dean Fisher

Montour