The PP agrees with Vox to create a specific section in Valencian libraries for LGTBI books
Content on sexuality and diversity for young people returns to the Valencian parliamentary debate. The regional Parliament addresses the suitability of sexual education books with a focus LGBTI be accessible to minors in public libraries, a debate sparked by an extreme right initiative that follows in the footsteps of other reactionary governments. PP and Vox have approved in the Corts Valencianes that municipalities with more than 25.000 inhabitants have a specific section for this material that, after an amendment to the PP, gives rise to a text ambiguous enough to fit within the framework of the extreme right.
The popular amendment, accepted by its government partners Vox, leaves the initiative like this: the Corts urge public libraries to “the creation of a specific section on sexual, family, gender diversity, and sexual development that respects human rights”. The contents, the text continues, “They will be sequenced by educational levels and prepared under standardized criteria from a scientific, objective and non-doctrinal point of view in accordance with current regulations.".
Vox presented a text that, like Florida or Hungary, demanded that these contents be away from children's sections of public libraries. The group took the example of the local government of Burriana (Castellón), where they have powers in Culture, which ordered the removal of books with “sexual content"of the children's section and its transfer"to a new special area for adults that has been created for this purpose".
The far-right councilor Jesus Albiol, who is the same deputy who has defended the initiative in Corts, justified that the library law indicates that diversity content must be in a specific framework, but making a twisted use of language, links the material that addresses sexual identity or diversity education with sexual content for adults that harms “innocence” of the minors. Without mentioning it explicitly, it alludes to a material that in the imagination
Out of the reach of minors
The text presented by Vox consider the action of Burriana "an example for all municipalities in the region as a precise and effective measure to ensure the highest good of the minor and guarantee the freedom of parents” and considered these books a “type of materials" what "As requested by an important sector of the population and mainly families, it should be in places in the library in a specific section out of the reach of minors.".
Specifically, the wording defended by the ultras asks the Corts to urge the Consell to “request all public libraries in the Valencian Community, in municipalities with more than 25.000 inhabitants, to create a specific section and transfer to said section all library materials with content on sexual, family, and gender diversity.” and sexual development that respect human rights. This section must be independent from the rest of the sections, especially the children's section.”
By cons, Compromís and the PSPV They have demanded that library staff be allowed to place the material as they see fit, based on what the law establishes, and that they not “politically grope” the arrangement of books in public centers. Librarians have their own criteria for creating sections, insists the opposition, which has voted against this measure because it believes it is another step in the censorship carried out by the parliamentary extreme right.
