Because It’s Illegal

There are a number of us in my community who are working at improving our school district, trying to get more parent-responsive schoolboard members, trying to get more school choice, trying to get rid of SEL, CRT,and sexualizing materials from our schools. One person in the group pointed us to a video clip from a Michael Knowles show, in which Knowles highlights a dad in upstate New York who addresses his school board in an exemplary way.

 

Michael Knowles highlights a parent addressing a school board,
screenshot from here

The dad sets up a scenario: your 15-year-old daughter’s birthday party. Would you give her this particular book—it was Girl in Translation—and he reads a passage from it. [This book is in my school district's libraries, by the way.] The passage depicts a sex scene in graphic detail. Then he asks, in the same level, unemotional tone, would they give that book to their daughter? Would they read that to her? He notes that their reaction of revulsion shows they would not. And yet the book is in the schools for 10^th-graders, coinciding with that hypothetical 15-year-old daughter.

Then he read them the US Department of Justice’s statement on their website concerning laws on obscenity. He simply points out that having the book available to minors is in violation of the US code, implying to those with ears to hear that, if they don’t clear up this problem, they will be liable and should maybe lawyer up.

Here in Texas we’ve been working through the legislature—without success thus far—to eliminate the “obscenity exemption,” which allows images or descriptions that would otherwise be considered pornographic to be allowed for educational purposes. The intention of the exemption has been to allow diagrams, etc., for health science and sex education. But it has been used as a cover for anything; once a book is in the school, you call it educational, even if it would get you charged elsewhere.

Novels, including graphic novels, are not used for science and sex ed. In our school district, those particular books are disallowed from use for sex ed by the SHAC committee (school health advisory committee).

So this got me thinking: we don’t have to depend on getting rid of that obscenity exemption. The schools are already in violation of US federal laws against providing porn to minors. And they’re against the Texas code as well.

Maybe we could use this law approach to get rid of these books in schools—starting with speaking up at school board meetings. And I would assume that might need to be followed up with lawsuits—criminal prosecutions, or civil suits wherever local prosecutors fail to follow through with criminal prosecutions.

To that end, I’m looking at what could be said at school board meetings. And maybe this can be a template for parents of other school districts to use.

In our district, community members get typically two minutes to speak, so what I have below may need to be divided up for multiple speakers. I’ll be showing materials related specifically to my district. But the books mentioned are widely used across the country. You should be able to go to your school district website and find out what books are available in the libraries. And you should also be able to track down your district’s policies for getting obscene books removed from libraries.

So, consider what is below to be addressing the local school board.

 

The Law

Suppose some nefarious person decided to illustrate a classic piece of literature—let’s say a collection of Keats poetry—with pornographic images. Would the book qualify as literature because of the literary value of the poems? Or would it qualify as pornographic because of those images?

The answer is, literature does not elevate the pornography to the level of literature; the pornography degrades the otherwise inspiring poetry into a work of pornography.

This is a matter of law.

According to the US Department of Justice website, which I’ve included in your handout: 

“transmitting obscenity and child pornography, whether via the Internet or other means, is…illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles.”

Obscenity is not protected speech under the First Amendment. Violations are criminal offenses. Also, the standard for what is harmful to minors may be different from the standard for adults, and offenders convicted of obscenity crimes involving minors face harsher penalties than if the crimes involved only adults. I suggest you read the statement in your handout.

Department of Justice information page on Obscenity

The Texas Penal Code, also in your handout, explicitly defines obscene as depicting “offensive representations of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.” Also included are depictions or descriptions of other lewd acts. I’ll let you read the details.

Texas Penal Code 43:21

Note that none of these defined violations is allowed if you just couch it in enough non-sexual material. One example in one book is enough to be in violation of the law.

 

Process for Removing Obscenity from Schools

I understand that Cy-Fair ISD has a process called “Request for Formal Reconsideration of Library Materials,” which was updated in November 2022 and put into use January 2023. 

After identifying yourself and your relationship to the district, and the particular book in question, the first question on the request form is: 

“Have you reviewed the resources in their entirety? (If not, please do so before completing and submitting this form.)”

If a book is 150 pages long, and you’re reading through and find one example of explicit sex—which meets the statute’s definition of pornography—you do not need to read the remaining pages to know that the book contains material that should not be made available to minors.

If someone made a cake with excrement in it, would you require that a person eat the entire cake before they can speak to complain about the foul ingredient? If there is obscenity in it, it does not matter what else is in it; you cannot justify providing it to minors.

This is not merely an assumption. We have had brave parents who have read the materials in full, filled out all your forms for the formal request for reconsideration, and then patiently waited.

The chart included in your handout shows seven books that have been through the process. All of these contain multiple, pervasive examples of obscenity, some in written form, some in graphic illustrations. The examples are unmistakably inappropriate for children. But the response from the review committees, expressed by letter from the school principals, is that each of these examples is “educationally appropriate” and will be retained in the schools where our children can access them. I’m unaware of any obscene books that have been removed via this process.

The chart is a compilation of materials provided by Bethany Scanlon in multiple blog posts
at the Conservative CFISD volunteer blog, where there is a post for each of these seven books,
including multiple photos of examples from each book, as well as the letters of response.

This is not something we can agree to disagree on. It is illegal to provide pornography to minors. You are doing so. You have librarians who choose and acquire these books. You have committees of people justifying them—in private meetings without minutes, in violation of the open meetings act, despite the AG’s directive that you provide names and minutes.

These hidden committees seem to be misunderstanding the law. They disregard the obscenity, because they like the gritty realism, or they don’t think there’s enough to call it pervasive, or they offer some other justification.

These books do not qualify as sex ed; the district’s SHAC committee has ruled against using them for that purpose, so you cannot hide behind an obscenity exemption.

 

Damage to Children

Another question on your Request for Reconsideration form asks how we found the problem book, as if hearing about it from another community member is some sort of campaign you can ignore, and you only have to listen if our own child found it in the school, meaning damage is already done to our child.

Yet another of your questions asks what damage we see could result from the book—as if we have to come up, from scratch, with the arguments that led Congress to outlaw giving porn to children. We already know it does harm.

It is disingenuous for the proponents of providing pornography to children to claim we concerned parents are the book banners—as if we were trying to eliminate Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird from our libraries. We are not talking about First Amendment freedoms. We’re talking about illegal materials that we all know are harmful and cause trauma to children; that is why the laws are written to particularly protect children.

If the Cy-Fair ISD schools that have refused to remove these materials from their libraries are following your own policy requirements, they are providing the complaint, the book, and their response to the superintendent and the school board, which must mean the superintendent and school board can call into question the final decision. That also means this superintendent and school board can be held liable for breaking the law—in addition to the librarians and staff who procured the materials for the purpose of making them available to minors, and the principals who approved their retention.

Your process for reconsideration has provided evidence. Failure to immediately correct these serious errors puts you personally at risk of prosecution.

Worth Standing Up

I’m about a third of the way through a book that I expect to write more about. But I just read a chapter that was kind of overwhelming. So I’m not waiting.

cover image from here

The book is Standing Up to Goliath, by Rebecca Friedrichs. She’s the one from the US Supreme Court case Friedrichs v California Teachers Association. She, along with other plaintiffs, was trying to prevent the teacher’s union from forcing teachers to pay money to the unions that would be used for political purposes against their beliefs.

After oral arguments, it was clear her side was prevailing. The Court was likely to vote 5-4 in her favor. On the verge of their celebrations, however, Justice Scalia suddenly passed away. So the case went 4-4, which left the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in place. The CTA won by default.

Much of the book talks about tactics used by the teachers’ unions—not just the California state one, but national ones as well. Friedrichs says,

I’d like to point out four psychological manipulations used by those who force power and control over others: fear, intimidation, isolation, and ignorance.

Teachers unions aren’t the only places we see those things. They show up wherever there are power mongers seeking power. It’s one of the evils of mankind.

The challenge is standing up to those power mongers despite the fear, intimidation, isolation, and ignorance they use against us.

The chapter I’m covering today is Chapter 8: “SeXXX Education—Teachers’ Union Style.” I’ve mentioned before that things are worse than we had imagined. (See also here.) But I continue to be shocked.

Friedrichs begins with a friend’s story, from 2013. This young mother had an eleven-year-old daughter in a California fifth grade public school. She had just learned about the school’s sex education program and wanted to spread a warning. She sent a link to an eight-week Planned Parenthood-designed curriculum called Making Proud Choices!

Warning: Please use discretion if you’re reading this around children, since this blog is usually guaranteed safe.

Here’s one of the “fun” “age-appropriate” activities for fifth graders: In the classroom, set up two anatomically correct, fully erect adult penis models. Separate the pre-teens into two lines of boys and girls. Have the two teams of children race to put a condom onto the penis the proper way while verbalizing the steps involved.

That one, while not age-appropriate, is at least about a type of sex the students are likely to encounter in their lifetimes. But they’re taught not to be limited. Friedrichs says,

Vaginal, Anal, and Oral sex (referred to casually as VAO) come up and was normalized in every single lesson, and in one lesson, in which they discuss a thirteen-minute “Hawaii Video,” kids are taught to protect themselves during anal and oral sex by using a “dental dam.” I had no idea what this meant, so I had to look it up. I was so shocked by what I saw in the search results, I couldn’t bring myself to open any of the links, but I was able to understand enough to know dental dams (originally created to help dentists during oral surgery), are now being used between the mouth and anus or vagina during oral sex, and our school leaders feel this is appropriate information for eleven-year-olds.

I don’t have the imagination to make up such a thing.

Another teacher friend, referred to only as Stella, contacted her from Massachusetts, with links to a similar program used there called Teen Talk. This included sixteen birth control methods, “including an ‘insertive condom’ that can be used in the vagina or anus, government approved birth control methods we’d never even heard of or seen, and a large erect penis model.” And she described the “dental dam” as “a big, pink rectangle of vinyl—maybe ten inches long.”

I’ve been in a dentist’s chair when this was used—particularly for removing hazardous mercury-containing fillings. But how is a fifth grader supposed to come by one, after being told it’s the “responsible” thing to do?

Stella said, at this point,

“We were all floored by the content in Teen Talk. It had really extreme and explicit sexual content and graphics, a lot of detailed discussion about intercourse, anal sex, oral sex, and really immature handling of it with games and activities that demonstrated sexual practices. You’re using these inappropriate childish games to teach something that is far beyond age appropriate. This was not family life or teaching kids how to their bodies were changing or what to expect with hormones. This was straight up training them to partake in various sexual acts.”

Friedrichs’ reaction was probably similar to yours:

This is child abuse, and I would resign my position before being forced to teach this deplorable lesson to children. It’s more suitable to a drunken fraternity party than a classroom full of vulnerable kids. I remember vividly what it was like to be eleven years old, and I’ve worked with eleven-year-old children for three decades. I can assert with authority that most eleven-year-olds forced to touch fully erect man-sized penis models and discuss condoms, penises, and sex would be profoundly traumatized.

If you have a teacher who would not resign before teaching such lessons, do you want that either pervert or spineless drone teaching anything to your child? And yet the lessons are being taught by teachers who do give in simply because the union is coercing them to.

Parents were not being warned that this new curriculum was different from what the schools had been teaching. And if the parents didn’t want their child to receive it, they had to “opt out.” Also, the district was sneakily calling it a “pilot program,” to avoid public review, but teachers were told at the training that it was being implemented district-wide for all middle schools that year (2017).

If you think this was about providing the children with needed information to prevent teenage pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases and even AIDS, you would be wrong. That is not the agenda. The agenda is to indoctrinate children to accept any and every form of sexual activity.

Another teacher in California, referred to only as Priscilla, looked further into the Teen Talk curriculum.

Using data from the CDC, Red Cross, FDA, and HIV.gov, Priscilla has been challenging these curriculums because while teaching risky sexual behaviors, they are withholding vital information that would protect students from contracting or transmitting HIV. She told [Friedrichs], “The law says its purpose is to provide pupils with the knowledge and skills necessary to protect their sexual and reproductive health from HIV. However, given the critical knowledge they are withholding from students, it seems the real purpose is to promote various sexual orientations.”

The unions’ idea of “age-appropriate” and “medically accurate” information isn’t going to have the same definitions you, as a sane parent, would have. Why are school unions doing this? I’m expecting that the unions have long been seen as an avenue for forcing ideologies onto the public, because of their power. So anyone with an ideology that can’t win on its merits infiltrates the unions in order to propagandize through the schools.

The bullying tactics specifically target people who believe in traditional sexual mores. Priscilla gives this example, which hit home for me, as a Latter-day Saint:

“I used to teach high school. I had a transgender student, gay students, and students of faith in my classes. In the context of a class discussion a Mormon student expressed his personal beliefs about marriage being between a man and woman. He shared his views respectfully.” She then asked the presenter [at a CTA conference] the following question: “As a teacher, how do you think I should have handled that situation in order to respect the diversity of all of my students?”

The CTA lobbyist replied, “You should treat that student as though he said, ‘Black people should be burned at the stake.’”

At first Priscilla thought this might be an aberrant opinion of a particular union representative. So she asked again, at a conference the following year, in a workshop ironically titled, “Creating a Safe Place—Legal Obligation,” led by the LGBT CTA caucus chairman. This person “affirmed that his colleague was right to say the Mormon student should have been treated as though he had said, ‘Black people should be burned at the stake.’” Creating a safe space does not mean for everyone, but only for the ones who agree with the union’s ideology.

Friedrichs added that her son was bullied for his Christian beliefs, from middle school through college. She says, “One of Ben’s teachers even harassed him in front of the class because his political science tests revealed his conservative values.” Teachers who attack students with these ideas are protected. But Friedrichs gives many examples in her book of teachers being bullied for doing what is actually in the best interest of students, their education, and their wellbeing.

Dr. Linda Gonzales verified the experiences of Friedrichs and people like Priscilla. She told Friedrichs,

I believe we can practice tolerance and debate issues and beliefs without mocking, insulting, disparaging, or offending one another. What I found difficult about the CTA position is that it disparages and disrespects divergent ideas by mocking, insulting, and dismissing the speakers of different persuasions, especially Christians, with labels such as “Hate Speech.” My takeaway is that the First Amendment, in their view, applies only to sanitized ideas and beliefs. In my view, this is anti-American and not aligned to the Constitution. I value open debate and religious freedom.”

Is there a way out? There has to be. If we don’t find a way out, we have savagery replacing our civilization.

I haven’t left room to cover the possible ways out today. But, for future review, here are some:

·       Homeschool. The best option, if you can do it.

·       Be vigilant. Be the parent who reviews the curriculum, brings it before the school board, warns the other parents, and pulls your child out of that dangerous pornographic harm that’s being labeled as education.

·       Work toward legislation that prevents pornographic materials from being presented in schools; this idea is to remove the “obscenity exemption,” which has been used to allow certain images and words to be used in schools that would otherwise be prosecutable as pornography. It’s in the Texas Republican Party Platform this year (Plank 93), so I’m hoping we can get this protection passed in the legislature. There’s also a plank (plank 121) to prevent schools from contracting with any third party, such as Planned Parenthood, for sex education or health curriculum.

·       Work toward doing away with the power of the teachers’ unions—who are using teacher pay and tax-free money to lobby for political positions that have nothing to do with a good education and everything to do with propagandizing their versions of savagery.

Painting called "Captain Moroni and
the Title of Liberty" by Arnold Friberg
found here

The only way to win against a bully that uses fear, intimidation, isolation, and ignorance to enforce ideas that are absolutely unacceptable is to stand up to them, regardless of the power differential. If you value freedom and civilization, this is a battle you have to fight. Here we are about to celebrate the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. He stood up. Spoke up. And brought about needed change.

There’s a story in the Book of Mormon, during a time of war, when a leader, Captain Moroni, reminds the people what they’re fighting for (Alma 46:12). He writes this on a cloak, to use as a battle flag, which is called the “Title of Liberty”:

In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children

That would be a good battle flag for us now.