Failure to protect individual freedoms in anti-transgender care bill is mind-boggling | Opinions
Vote NO on HB 71
As a family physician, I care for each member of our community that comes to my exam room. I meet them where they are and collaborate to gain the best health possible. Often this means respecting their wishes to make very unwise choices or decisions I do not personally support. For example, many Idahoans do not wish to receive life-saving vaccines. Since this decision directly harms not only their own health but that of our community, I could more readily see the Legislature punishing me for “Failure to protect” our community than the inane HB 71, which threatens to criminally punish me for affirmatively treating individuals who desire certain care that singly affects them and does zero damage to fellow community members. I strongly request: Keep the government out of our bedrooms, out of our gun safes and out of our exam rooms. The failure to protect individual freedoms as threatened in HB 71 is mind-boggling in a supposedly “red state” that abhors nanny style, centralized government invasions of privacy.
Brian Crownover, Boise
Private school indoctrination
As an educator in Idaho I have been closely following the discussion in our state legislature regarding “school vouchers.”
Recently, Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, referred to SB 1038, “When schools are held accountable to parents rather than government, the less ‘woke’ those schools are…In a free market, where money truly follows the child to the school of their parents’ choice, indoctrination and other issues will be reduced, and accountability will increase.”
In my profession, we are required to use “evidence-based practices.” I would hope my representatives do the same when making decisions that cost $45 million. If this is her opinion based on anecdotal experience, I caution her to please look for legitimate data before she relies on the assumption that less “woke” people will be more ethical with taxpayer dollars.
SB 1038 provides private and home schools tax dollars with no accountability regarding content, while public schools face an onslaught of radical regulation. Where is the equity?
Sen. Nichols has expressed concern about “indoctrination” in public schools; I, too, have concerns about my money funding “indoctrination” in private and home schools, but the legislature doesn’t seem to care.
Kelli Sowa, Moscow
Library materials
I object to HB 139 which would limit access to books in Idaho’s schools and libraries. The bill states that if a minor is allowed to access library materials that the bill deems “harmful,” the child’s parents could file a lawsuit against the library for $10,000.
Idaho Republicans place a high value on parental control. It’s still legal here to let an ill child die from lack of medical care if the parents prefer an alternate approach. Yet Idaho Republicans want to limit parental control for parents who don’t fall in lockstep with their views. Besides hypocritically limiting some parental controls, a common theme in the Republican bills this session involves criminalizing anything they disagree with.
Parents have the right to limit their child’s reading materials. But a small minority of parents shouldn’t have the right to limit every child’s materials. Talk to your school librarian about all the work they do to provide age-appropriate materials to the children they serve. They don’t deserve to be threatened with lawsuits by a few.
Legislators should focus on real issues, such as the budget, infrastructure and housing. Let parents do their job to guide their children’s literary choices.
Amy Steckel, Boise
Libraries bill
HB 139, Children’s School and Library Protection Act, despite its title and what its authors state, is a thinly veiled attempt to ban books in public libraries that depict “any nudity, sexual conduct....” etc. that is “patently offensive to prevailing standards.” It further allows (encourages?) parents to bring civil suits with a penalty of up to $10,000 against a public library which maintains such books on its shelves. And who is defining “patently offensive to prevailing standards”? I find this a highly discriminatory bill, which if passed, would set a precedent for banning other books from public libraries that any person, group or organization might decide is “patently offensive to their prevailing standards.”
Bob Swandby, Boise