A Florida school board member is calling for those involved in placing pornographic books in public school libraries to face reprimand after one outraged father was cut off at a board meeting when he attempted to expose one particularly graphic book containing a rape scene.
Clay County School District board member Ashley Gilhousen recently told Fox News that she was “disgusted” to discover just how many books in the district’s school libraries contain graphic and inappropriate content for children as young as elementary school when she conducted her own research after the meeting.
“I don’t think there’s any justification for it. And I can tell you my own research in our school library so far I’ve identified 75 books that I’m working to challenge to get off of ourselves,” she said.
Gilhousen is herself a mother to three boys who attend Clay County public schools.
“I’m disgusted that anybody would think that that’s appropriate material to have in a school library,” she continued. “There needs to be disciplinary action for anybody who offers this kind of material to a child.”
One such example was “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, in which one character describes a sexual encounter they had with an adult man when they were just 10 years old.
Another was “Lucky” by Alice Sebold, which has a graphic description of a rape.
“Lucky” was the subject of comments made by Clay County father Bruce Friedman during a meeting of which Gilhousen was apart — that is, before Friedman was cut off my another board member as he attempted to read from the explicit novel, available for minor students in the district school.
UNREAL. A dad says he’s gonna read from graphic books available to children in school and gets shut down by @oneclayschools board before he even starts because it might be against the law to read from these books in front of children.
These books are in school libraries. pic.twitter.com/PCJSMCttq5
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 12, 2022
Later in the meeting, Fox explained, the board adopted emergency measures to create a “mechanism so that as soon as a book is challenged, it’s removed from the shelf until it’s reviewed.”
Gilhousen explained that one of the means through which these books end up in schools is when a publisher includes “bonus books” with an order filled by public school libraries.
“Some of those are more politically driven agenda-type books are snuck in that way,” she explained.
We need to create a mechanism that spells out very plainly who is held accountable for the books that are on the shelves. And it obviously starts with the library media center specialists, but those purchases are then signed off by the principal who is then accountable to the superintendent,” Gilhousen told the outlet. “I don’t understand how anybody could make such an egregious mistake.”
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