Missouri parents undeterred in fight to eliminate ‘smut’ books from schools

Missouri parents undeterred in fight to eliminate ‘smut’ books from schools
By: Lifesite News Posted On: November 23, 2023 View: 70

CAMERON, Missouri (LifeSiteNews) — A group of concerned parents in Missouri told LifeSiteNews they’re not planning on giving up anytime soon in their months-long battle to push their school district to remove dozens of books that they say are sexually explicit and inappropriate for kids.

LifeSiteNews reported on the group’s battle with the school district in July, which came amid similar efforts nationwide to pull books with explicit content off the shelves of school libraries and classrooms.

Community members in Missouri’s Cameron R-1 School District told LifeSite they’ve found even more inappropriate books since this summer and are continuing to urge the district to make major changes. Thus far, the district has made it possible for parents to challenge books and have stated they are exploring restricting certain titles to specific age groups — but they’ve also said that the process will be lengthy and shouldn’t take away from the district’s primary educational goals.

The group of concerned parents, including retired Missouri State Highway Patrolman Dan Landi, have previously flagged books, including “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Lucky,” and “The Female of the Species,” which contain graphic sexual content including explicit descriptions of rape, incest, and homosexual acts. The vast majority of the flagged books have been located in the district’s high school library.

The Missouri community members told LifeSite in the summer that their concerns were not being taken seriously and argued that the degree of depravity contained in some of the books stocked in the library amounted to violations of the state’s statutes that prohibit making pornographic materials available to children.

READ: Parents fight back after finding dozens of sexually-explicit books in Missouri school libraries

But Landi told LifeSite in a November 13 email that the Cameron School Police Department had concluded an investigation into the district — which had been triggered by the parents’ complaints — and found no violations.

Landi argues the department’s investigation of the district presents a conflict of interest. 

Fellow concerned citizen Heath Gilbert backed up Landi’s remarks in a November 15 email to LifeSite. He said that he and Landi have reached out to the Department of Education and other officials about the potential conflict of interest, but that they have received no response.

Ninth District State Rep. Dean Van Schoiack, a Republican, told Gilbert in an October 5 email shared with LifeSiteNews that it wasn’t his job to interpret the law or to direct school boards on what to do. He directed concerned citizens to review the laws relevant to the issue “and seek legal advice.”

“The school has addressed the issue and put parents in charge,” he said.

Gilbert said the board of education, along with district superintendent Matt Robinson, have told them that the books in the district don’t violate the state’s statutes against pornographic materials being made available to minors.

LifeSiteNews reached out to Robinson for comment multiple times via email but has not heard back.

“Meanwhile, we have found approximately 50 additional books in the school district, bringing the total to around 130,” Landi told LifeSite. “Most are sexually explicit without pictures or drawings. Others, however, are graphic in nature, depicting drawings and pictures of sex acts and human genitals.”

Earlier this month, Landi filed a complaint with the Clinton County Sheriff’s Department, which he said is now investigating the claims concerning the books. LifeSiteNews reached out to the sheriff’s department for confirmation and will update this article when such confirmation is received.

The district has made some moves in the direction of parental rights.

As Van Schoiack referenced in his letter, Landi and Gilbert told LifeSite that the district has agreed to restrict books if a parent submits a signed form. But Landi said “the problem is the school district doesn’t list all the smut books so the parents can make an informed decision.”

“As it stands, the parents simply don’t know what dirty books are available to their children because you can’t judge a book by its title,” he explained. “Many of these pornographic book titles sound very innocent, but inside are very dirty!”

Gilbert noted that “there are more than 30,000 books in our school district” and “[p]arents are responsible for knowing which of those 33K they do not want their [children] to read, and list them individually by title and author.”

He said the district doesn’t “catalog the subjects of books in a manner which would make that feasible.” For instance, he said, a book that contains graphic descriptions of male homosexual relations isn’t listed with any tags that would indicate such content existed in the book.

In a September meeting, school board president Pam Ice read a prepared statement acknowledging the concerns of the community members but stating that any process to restrict mature content will take time and cannot be allowed to “jeopardize our core mission of educating our students.”

She said the board has called administrators to give an update in December on the review process of the original 80 challenged titles, and until that time “will not be responding to the barrage of emails” concerning the issue.

But the group of concerned parents isn’t content to simply wait for the district to issue a new statement or stand up a new meeting.

Landi said he and his compatriots “continue to speak out at school board meetings,” even though a new policy stipulates they may only bring up the same topic for discussion once every three months. 

And Landi and Gilbert told LifeSite they “are currently searching for prospective candidates in the upcoming school board elections in April 2024.”

RELATED: Ohio school board elects new leaders who promise to stop letting gender-confused boys use girls’ bathrooms

“Only by altering current policy, or creating something new, can anything be done,” Gilbert said. “I believe the default position should be to protect children from sexually explicit and other inappropriate adult content by restricting access to it without parental approval.”

According to Landi, “the only way to turn our school district around is to turn the school board inside out.”

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