Gov. Terry McAuliffe last week vetoed a bill that would have made Virginia the only state to require K-12 teachers to identify classroom materials with “sexually explicit content” so that parents could opt their children out of such reading.
The legislation became known as the “Beloved bill,” because it stemmed from a parent’s attempt to remove author Toni Morrison’s book from a high school curriculum.
The bill would have required schools to notify parents if a teacher was using instructional materials with “sexually explicit content,” to allow parents to review the content, and to provide an alternative assignment at a parent’s request. The governor said that the legislation “would require the label of ‘sexually explicit’ to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context.”
