by Reagan Reese
A California school district is offering books with pornographic scenes in its school websites, and parents are planning to take action.
Poway Unified School District in Poway, California, is giving students access to several books that feature pornographic scenes, according to the library databases. Several parents have compiled a database of age-inappropriate content in the district libraries and brought it to the attention of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, a group that focuses on equal rights in education, the Executive Director of the group, Wenyuan Wu told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“We had our annual conference last weekend in San Diego, and some parents, actually three parents from Poway Unified School District attended our conference,” Wu told the DCNF. “We spoke afterwards to the moms who told me that they have been documenting abusive and inappropriate content both in school libraries and also in classrooms.”
Available to students beginning in ninth grade, in Poway High School and Westview High School is “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel, a graphic memoir about a girl who discovers she is a lesbian in college and that her father is gay, according to the library databases. The book displays illustrations of the main character engaging in oral sex and a cadaver being dissected while the main character comments on the genitals on the man.
“Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe is held in Rancho Bernardo High School which focuses on a memoir on gender identity and “the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes,” the school library website showed. The memoir includes illustrations of the character masturbating and receiving oral sex.
“This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson is available in four high school libraries in the school district, the websites showed. The book is described as a “instruction manual” for LGBTQ students and teaches “boy-on-boy sex” and educates readers on “where to meet people like you.”
Lenice Sechrist, a mom of two children in the district, teamed up with other parents to create the database and has brought her concerns to the school board and district in the past, Sechrist told the DCNF.
“Right now for us parents, we’re investigating the laws,” Sechrist told the DCNF. “We’re literally at that stage, just trying to figure out through our variety of resources, how we can combat this. I wanted them to do the right thing and just fix it. But they’re not and so it’s like, well, how can we legally do something? We’re searching for education codes.”
Sechrist, Rachelle Babler, a mom of two children in the district, and other parents are attending the school district meeting on Thursday to bring attention to the database, Sechrist and Babler told the DCNF.
“I believe our kids are being threatened,” Sechrist told the DCNF. “I believe families are being threatened. It has to stop.”
The book “Two Boys Kissing” by David Levithan is about two boys who kiss for 32 hours to break the world record and is available in several high school libraries in the school district, according to the library websites. The book focuses on gender identity and “gay hookup sites.”
The novel “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison is promoted on the TeachingBooks database, which is provided by the state of California and aims to “equitably give all readers insights,” which is promoted on schools within the district’s websites. The book includes scenes of the boys discussing porn and oral sex.
The complete database complied by the parents and obtained by the DCNF features more than 70 books in the district that are age inappropriate and cover a range of topics including gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual nudity and sexual assault.
“When the school has to have a permission slip for a rated PG movie in class but not pornographic books in libraries and age-inappropriate content in the classroom, there is a huge problem,” Babler told the DCNF. “Poway Unified has made transparency, parental notification and opt-out next to impossible and parent’s have a constitutional right to control our children’s education on sensitive topics around human sexuality.”
The school district did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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Reagan Reese is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Poway Unified School District” by Poway Unified School District.
