Florida dad's mic cut off during school board meeting after reading from library book
President of Florida's No Left Turn in Education Bruce Friedman joined 'America's Newsroom' to discuss the incident and his effort to encourage 'transparency' within the classroom.
Across the country, librarians in schools and public libraries are stocking the shelves with material that is so pornographic that when parents have tried to read aloud and show the material at school board meetings, their microphones were cut off.
For progressives, the victim of the situation isn’t the children exposed to inappropriate content; the hero of the story isn’t the parents fighting for their kids’ innocence. No, the hero and victim of the coverage of these incidents are the librarians buying the sexually explicit content and recommending it to children.
Books on a desk in an elementary school library. (iStock)
Librarians are putting themselves on the front lines of a culture war, often shooting the first shots, and then bemoaning that they’ve found themselves under fire. But here’s the thing: Libraries have turned themselves into battlegrounds for these arguments, and librarians, one of the most radically progressive professions, have made them that way.
If you’re hosting drag queen story hour and stocking literal pornography on the shelves, you’ve surrendered the right to just ask for a quiet and respectful conversation about how you’re doing your job.
How libraries are functioning is an assault on our children, paid for by our tax dollars. It’s long past time for parents to fight back, even if they’re called book banners for doing so. Librarians turned themselves into political warriors and are trying to make our kids into their foot soldiers. They don’t get to do so without a fight.
Parents and community members attend a Loudoun County School Board meeting, just 40 minutes from Fairfax, Virginia. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
Progressives have received their talking points on the matter. Efforts on the part of parents to make sure that inappropriate and pornographic materials aren’t available to their children is called "book banning." In April, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, held a hearing to examine what he called "the ongoing efforts across the country to ban books from schools and public libraries."
A single mother of a middle schooler in Raskin’s district, Marilyn (who asked to be anonymous for professional reasons), shared with me her own story. She told me,
"My daughter started asking to go to the school early so she could spend some time in the library and came home with 'George' by Alex Gino. I had not heard of this book, and have yet to meet the school librarian. I asked my daughter if she picked out the book and she told me that the librarian gave it to her and said she thought she would like it. I still have no idea why.
"The school librarian also apparently said the same things about 'Rick' by Alex Gino. 'The Art of Being Normal' by Lisa Williamson also came home from the school library. These three books are the only books that came home from the school library in Montgomery County in 2021-2022."
Gino’s book "George," which has since been renamed "Melissa," has been at the top of the American Library Association’s list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books for several years. The ALA, with its list, posit the book challenges are akin to censorship. Here’s a sample from "George," just to get an idea of what many parents objected to:
"George stopped. It was such a short little question, but she couldn’t make her mouth form the sounds.
"Mom, what if I’m a girl?
Supporters celebrate as transgender protection measures were approved during a school board meeting at the Loudoun County Public Schools Administration Building on Aug. 11, 2021 in Ashburn, Virginia. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
"George had seen an interview on television a few months ago with a beautiful woman named Tina. She had golden-brown skin, thick hair with blond highlights, and long, sparkling fingernails. The interviewer said that Tina had been born a boy, then asked her whether she’d had the surgery. The woman replied that she was a transgender woman and that what she had between her legs was nobody’s business but hers and her boyfriends.
"So George knew it could be done. A boy could become a girl. She had since read on the Internet you could take girl hormones that would change your body, and you could get a bunch of different surgeries if you wanted them and had the money. This was called transitioning. You could even start before you were 18 with pills called adrogen blockers that stopped the boy hormones already inside you from turning your body into a man’s. But for that, you needed your parents’ permission."
All you have to do is permanently mutiliate yourself with major surgery and hormone therapy; it’s as easy as taking antibiotics!
This is the message in a book marketed for ages 8-12; one that was the winner of the Stonewall Book award, Lambda Literary Award, E.B. White Honor, a best book of the year for Booklist, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. It also won a New York Public Library Notable Book Award. It’s a book that librarians around the country are trying to push into the hands of its young patrons.
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In 2021, Gino’s "George / Melissa" was finally getting knocked out of the top spot by a new book, "Gender Queer," by Maia Kobabe. In its coverage of the "book banning" wars in the its Sunday newsletter, the New York Times interviewed Alexandra Alter, a Times reporter covering the publishing industry on the subject, and in its graphics illustrating the newsletter item, "Gender Queer" was one of the books highlighted.
Alter was asked, "How are librarians responding?" And Alexandra laid it on, thick with her reply, "It’s heartbreaking for them. Librarians say they got into this field because of a love of reading and talking to people about books. Some have left their jobs; some have been fired for refusing to remove books. Others quit after being subject to a barrage of insults on social media."
Alter recently sounded a similar tone in a piece she wrote for the Times about the plight of the librarians facing backlash for their choices in purchasing and display choices,
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"As highly visible and politicized book bans have exploded across the country, librarians – accustomed to being seen as dedicated public servants in their communities – have found themselves on the front lines of an acrimonious culture war, with their careers and their personal reputations at risk."
This is the message the Times and progressives have committed themselves to: Our tax dollars should remain a discretionary fund on behalf of librarians pushing a radical racial and gender ideology on our children. If you dare to object and try to keep the children’s racks free of smut, you’re nothing but a book-banner.