Idaho Group Still Fighting to Remove Explicit Books From Children’s Library

A child reaches for the book "Johnny the Walrus," a satire by conservative commentator Matt Walsh, which pokes fun at parents who automatically treat as reality children's expressions of wanting to be something they're not biologically. Photographed in Alachua, Fla. on May 11, 2023. Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times

After an Idaho library refused to remove sexually explicit books, parents in the town fought back by crafting a plan to try to remove library leadership.

They’ve lost that battle.

But they’re not giving up the war, a group representative told The Epoch Times.

Now they’re placing some hope on a May 16 election of two trustees to the local library district’s board, said Michael Hon, a member of Concerned Citizens of Meridian.

But even adding two board members sympathetic to their cause probably won’t be enough to result in the changes his group hopes to achieve, at least this time, Hon said. The other three members of the five-person board are against removing the books, he said.

Parental rights activist Michael Hon, a member of Concerned Citizens of Meridian. Courtesy of Michael Hon

Hon’s group is upset about books in the Meridian Library District collection that are sexually explicit and unsuitable for teens and children, they say.

Picture books in the youth non-fiction section instruct on how to engage in a wide range of sex acts, members of the group discovered. The books also include graphic pictures and descriptions of sex.

“You don’t allow this stuff to be read in a public setting,” Hon said. “How is it good for kids?”

Explicit Offerings

Books group members found shocking on the public library’s shelves describe a wide range of sex acts.

“Sex is a Funny Word,” by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth, suggests how to experiment sexually with various bodily orifices. The same book includes cartoon illustrations of nude body parts and a girl engaged in a sex act alone.

Also in the children’s section is “My Body is Growing” by Dagmar Geisler, he said. Labeled for children ages 4–8, it graphically describes and illustrates sex acts.

Another youth offering they found at the library is “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley. Its illustrations show nude bodies engaged in heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, and sex acts of self-gratification.

In the teen section of Meridian’s library, youths can find “Nick and Charlie” by Alice Oseman, which includes graphic descriptions of gay sex between teens, he said. That section of the library also offers “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson, described as a sex guide for teens.

Also found in the youth section is “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan. The book includes illustrations of naked men with enlarged breast tissue resulting from taking estrogen. It also shows naked women with body characteristics resulting from taking testosterone.

Newly donated LGBT books are displayed in the library at Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond, Calif., on May 17, 2022. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The group found that the library’s adult section includes more books with explicit depictions, including “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, and “Body Music” by Julie Maroh.

Also available are books depicting sex acts with children, Hon said. Those include “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evinson, and “Flamer” by Mike Curato.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Meridian Library District for comment but received no response.

Protecting Children

The battle over Meridian’s library books began in early 2022 when Hon’s group discovered library books they believed to be potentially harmful to children.

Group members asked library officials in an April 2022 meeting to put the books in a separate section out of children’s reach.

The group told the library, “We’re not asking you to remove them, but we’re asking you to, maybe, segregate them and tell parents that there’s sexually explicit material in these books that might be harmful to kids,” Hon said.

The library leadership refused, citing First Amendment concerns, he said.

So group members went to library board meetings to complain about the books and ask for their removal.

In response, the library banned group members’ presence at the board’s public meetings, Hon said.

“That was essentially taxation without representation because they can take your money all day long, but you can’t speak out against what they’re doing,” Hon said.

So Concerned Citizens of Meridian dug into the library district’s public records.

“The Meridian Library District—they are a stand-alone taxing district,” Hon said. “And what that means is they have no accountability to any government organization, whether state, city, or county, except for the citizens—us.”

By filing Freedom of Information Act requests, Hon and other group members found the Meridian Library District raised $9 million annually in taxes.

That’s more than the combined budgets of the nearby towns of Star and Eagle, Hon said. The two towns have a combined population of 40,000 people.

Records showed the Meridian Library District spent $5 million in 2023 on personnel costs for its 80 employees, Hon said. The district automatically increases its budget by 3 percent yearly, he said.

An Unusual Strategy

After gathering that information, Hon and other group members came up with an unusual strategy to remove the books they believed to be problematic. If library officials didn’t remove the books, the group would work to remove library officials from their posts—by dissolving the library system.

The group officially asked the Ada County Board of Commissioners to consider putting the dissolution of the Meridian Library District on the ballot on Nov. 8.

If voters agreed, the move would dismantle the library as a legal entity, removing all the library’s trustees and employees, and transferring library property to the county to be sold.

It’s not that the group wanted to close the library, Hon said. They were counting on a legal loophole allowing the entity governing the library to be dissolved, then reorganized with new leadership.

No law specifies the library property would have to be sold immediately, Hon said. With a second petition, the county could create a new library system to replace the old one, he said.

Admittedly, asking for the library’s dissolution was a publicity stunt to call attention to the group’s concerns about the graphic books, Hon said.

But opponents didn’t see it that way. They insisted the group wanted to ban books and shut down the library permanently, Hon said.

“They basically portrayed us as extremists, as book banners,” he said.

It’s an accusation many parental rights activists around the country have faced when they’ve asked for explicit library materials to be removed from offerings for children.

In March, about 1,000 people attended a meeting of the Ada County Commission to oppose the group’s request to consider dissolving the library system.

Speaking at the meeting, Megan Larsen, board chairman of the Meridian Library District, dismissed concerns about sexual images in the books.

“There are lots of examples of literature with adult themes and topics,” Larsen told county commissioners.

Ultimately, commissioners decided not to put the dissolution of the library on the ballot.

Not Giving Up

The Meridian activists aren’t alone in their concern about the issue of explicit materials offered in public libraries in their state.

During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers passed House Bill 314 that would ensure schools and libraries couldn’t “promote, give, or make available to a minor” any materials depicting human “nudity, sexual conduct, or sadomasochistic abuse and that is harmful to minors” or materials with “explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, or sadomasochistic abuse” that would be “harmful to minors.”

Idaho Gov. Brad Little vetoed the bill on April 5.

“You can imagine how furious we were,” Hon said.

Having explicit books in the library within reach of children is a problem, Hon said, even if they’re not shelved in the children’s section.

“A lot of parents will tell us, ‘I don’t take my kids to the library anymore,’” he said, because they don’t feel it’s safe.

Even more concerning, Hon said, is a library policy that allows for graphic materials to be loaned out to children without parental consent.

“Any kid can go in and pick up an R-rated movie, and they can check it out,” and librarians are likely to help them, Hon said.

Additionally, local libraries often join consortiums with other libraries that likely have additional explicit materials, he said.

“Any kid can go onto any library website and basically order any book, not just to be delivered to their local libraries, so they can pick it up, but also to their house,” Hon said. “They have a fleet of vehicles. If they sent that through the mail, they would actually be committing a federal offense.”

He’s hopeful the community will elect new library trustees who share the group’s concerns. But only two seats are on the ballot.

So even if both oppose giving children sexually explicit books, it wouldn’t change policies, Hon said. But it would allow the town to learn what’s happening inside the library, he added.

“We'll see what happens,” he said.