Why is library board ignoring public's concerns?

In the months following the passing of Idaho House Bill 710 — which requires Idaho public and school libraries to move materials deemed harmful to children or face lawsuits — our own East Bonner Library board continues to insist that materials explicitly sexual in nature are not so. 

The material currently in question is comic "Saga", volume six, which contains graphic sexual content (speech and illustration) that the library board does not deem a danger to children, because it contains illustrations of sex, but “illustrations do not excite like a photograph.” The notion that the content was pornographic was also dismissed under the guise that, because the images depict aliens, they cannot sexually excite as human imagery would.

Title 18-1514 in Idaho Code comprehensively covers what is to be considered “obscene,” as materials related to children and vulnerable adults, and states: “The quality of any material or of any performance or of any description or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse, when it appeals to the prurient interest of minors as judged by the average person, applying contemporary community standards…”

By this definition, the concerns of numerous local patrons are founded in questioning why this comic series has not already been placed in a section of the library not accessible to minors at large. My question is: Why is the library board, supposedly elected to represent the desires of the community, ignoring all requests for further inquiry into material procurement and placement?

FAITH BRENNEMAN

Spirit Lake