Note: This essay quotes explicit sexual material.
When Paula Allen first wanted pornography removed from her child’s school library, she did n’t realize that would be controversial. People, she reasoned, agrees graphic depictions of sexual intercourse and pictures of full-frontal porn found in schools may be instantly removed.
The class board of Missouri’s Cameron R-I city, which serves 1, 600 kids in a neighborhood of Kansas City, disagreed. This August, the district removed 36 of 80 challenged books from the airflow table, where adolescents can still access publicly funded porn as long as they have family authority. After the city denied parents collection access, any obvious books that parents have n’t already discovered or future books chosen by people who have already purchased adolescents pornography may still be on the shelves.
” At my very first meeting]with ] the superintendent … I all but begged him,’ Let’s please work together in unity as a group, as parents, we have a concern. You have to address these concerns. This work collectively,'” Allen explained. “]They ] attempted to do essentially a character assassination, to discredit us and to make them, as in the school board and the school district administration, look like victims and make us look like villains. Because we’re standing up for our children”.
For more than two times, a group of native parents has fought to keep children in school libraries. Allen and Heath Gilbert spoke with The Federalist about the resistance efforts of their school board and their efforts to prevent children from reading erotic ebooks.  ,
‘ Erotica’ and ‘ Intercourse’ in Children’s Librarian
When sexually explicit collection novels were making regional reports in 2020, Gilbert began looking into the matter.  ,
” I went to the sheriff’s office and asked the problem,’ Hey, how do I get into the collection? I’d like to seem and see what books were it.’ And I asked the large school the same issue,'” Gilbert told the Federalist. ” I got the effects. I always got an response”.
By January 2023, Gilbert and his dad Dan Landi resorted to conducting their own investigation. Landi claimed he used the state’s virtual library library to ensure when high school teacher Tonya O’Boyle assured Landi erotic books were not accessible to Cameron R-I individuals.  ,
The findings were surprising. Gilbert and Landi report finding more than 60 ebooks with gay philosophy and sexually explicit content. Some contain eroticism and in-depth accounts of physical behavior. Some products have obvious images in them.  ,
” All Boys Are n’t Blue”, George M. Johnson’s self-proclaimed “memoir-manifesto” detailing the author’s” journey growing up as a queer Black man”, is available at Cameron High School. According to the library, students today need parent approval to enter it from the back office. Here is an excerpt ( warning: graphic ):
As with most items you do for the first time, there is a concern. However, I was having trouble imagining anyone inside of me because this was my cock. And he was… significant. But, I was gonna test. I had recently topped a person who evidently enjoyed it, but he had been having anal sex before I actually arrived. He knew what to expect. I did n’t. The only thing I knew about anal sex as a devoted movie watcher was that it was terrible, or at least played up as such on the cameras. He rose to the occasion and progressively inserted himself into me. The worst problems I can recall actually experiencing in my life. He therefore tried once, which felt less bad after adding more lubrication. He began his touching activity. Finally, I felt a mix of enjoyment with the discomfort.
Colleen Hardy, a local church head, gave portions of this guide to the school committee in 2023. However, the state’s text review committee, composed of high school director Jayson Erdman, assistant director Derek Lannigan, teacher Tonya O’Boyle, English professor Eden Beasley, and community member Andrew Henry, voted by secret ballot to keep the book in the high school library.
” The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, a coming-of-age story that covers racism, incest, and child molestation, is also available to children in the district’s library. This book is also recently marked as requiring parent approval for teens. Here’s a ( graphic ) excerpt:
He slammed the back of his leg as he sat down and sneezed at her head… He was enthralled by the jumbled memory of Pauline, and a desire to lengthen and lengthen his genitalia, which softened the lips of his anus. All of this lust was surrounded by a border of politeness. He wanted to f–k her tenderly. However, the tenderness would not endure. He could n’t bear to feel her vaginal tightness. His soul appeared to savagely snuffled out of her, and the enormous thrust he made into her then sparked the only sound she could make: a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat.
” How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity” by Michael Cart contains stories exploring” themes of gender identity, love, and sexuality” as well as graphics of male and female nudity. It can be borrowed by children in a school district library, now with parent permission.
Parents Challenge’ Secret’ School Board Meetings
Gilbert published his findings on Facebook in March 2023. He later created a website to share what he refers to as” the dirty book list” so parents can view the content for themselves.
After Gilbert went public with the existence of pornographic books in the school libraries, Superintendent Matt Robinson alerted the school board. A number of emails discovered in a request for open records from Gilbert reveal that two people, including librarian O’Boyle, requested a” closed session” to address the school board and exclude parents.
Robinson declined, the emails show, stating that would make it seem like they were “hiding something”. He later stated that he did n’t want to “give our citizens another arrow to call the MO Ethics Commission or State Attorney General’s office.”
Robinson wrote,” We knew this day was coming and we just wanted something to say about our procedure,” stating that he had known about the pornographic books since August 2022.
In another email, he said,” I sat down with all librarians in August, shared my thoughts on contentious books, and shared that it’s only a matter of time,” before making an apparent allusion to Gilbert’s Facebook post. ” Well our time arrived last Thursday”.
In March 2023, Gilbert and other parents filed paperwork to challenge the books ‘ adult content. In accordance with district policy, a book review committee made up of several school administrators.
” The decisions to keep all of these books started coming out”, Gilbert explained. I requested records through a Missouri Sunshine Law request, and I was quickly informed that there were no records available. I started inquiring into when those meetings were held, how they were held …]the book review committee members ] were meeting in secret”.
Gilbert obtained copies of the vote ballots from these meetings, which were cast anonymously.  , The state’s Sunshine Law requires “meetings, records, votes, actions, and deliberations of public governmental bodies be open to the public unless otherwise provided by law”, including “advisory committees or subcommittees that report to a larger governmental entity”. Gilbert claims that the Cameron R-I school board broke the law, so he complained to state attorney general Andrew Bailey.  ,
By August, the Board of Education had overturned the KLB AP-1 policy, which gave local taxpayers the authority to contest library books.
” We used to be able to come in every month…and we could talk about an issue until the issue was resolved”, Gilbert explained. They removed all of the rules that allowed me to challenge a book, as well as the establishment of a book review committee. That policy was rescinded”.
Allen argued that the library was in violation of the state’s September 2023 Library Certification Requirement.  , The law requires” all eligible public libraries]to] file the certification required…with the state library” to receive funding. In response to Allen’s records request for the school’s filing, the district claimed they had nothing to share.
‘ Cop-Out’ by School District
The high school added a form letting parents choose which books their children cannot borrow from the library and placed 36 books behind the circulation desk, where children must have parent permission to check them out, to appease parents. Gilbert claims that the form does n’t prevent children from reading explicit books that their parents are yet to learn.
” I ca n’t say I do n’t want my child to read a book about incest, homosexuality…heterosexual sex acts, violence to include murder. I ca n’t select a topic. There is no system. There is no ability for a parent to restrict a book based on the content”, Gilbert explained. To prevent my child from reading that adult material, I am required to know the content of the 33, 000 books in the Cameron school district.
Allen’s request to school board president Pam Ice to access the library and browse the books is revealed in emails obtained by The Federalist. In July 2024, Ice denied the request, rendering the parent consent form pointless — if parents ca n’t enter their children’s school library, they ca n’t name books in that library they do n’t want their children reading. They can only be sure to check the library catalog for explicit books they’ve read elsewhere.
Allen says the school’s actions are part of a greater effort to remove parental authority over children’s education. Parenting, she says, has been replaced by alleged “professional expertise”.
” There’s not one person on this planet that knows what’s best for my children more than I do”, Allen said. I believe they have elevated themselves to a level that is unreasonable for them to throw that weight around like they have more value and should be given more weight than a parent.
Parents,” Not Going Anywhere.”
The school district’s refusal to take action has caused the movement against pornography in Cameron children’s libraries to stall.  ,
” They wo n’t negotiate with us. They wo n’t talk with us. They wo n’t even tell us the school district’s position on what type of content is appropriate”, Gilbert said. They “absolutely refuse to engage in any dialogue with the community.” They will not answer any of our questions. We ask often, what is the educational value of this book? What is the book’s intended purpose for the curriculum?
But he’s not giving up the fight. Allen is not at all impressed, despite her daughter graduating from college and her son enrolling in a private school.
” I will continue to advocate for them”, Allen explained. ” I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere…because all kids matter, not just mine”.
The Federalist contacted Ice and Robinson to inquire whether they thought pornographic material was appropriate or educational for minors. The Federalist also inquired if Ice and Robinson thought the material was” sexually explicit” and asked about excerpts of pornographic material from the school library.
Robinson did not respond to the comment request. A link to the district’s policies and the current events timeline was provided in the response.
Ice did not respond to the Federalist’s second attempt to confirm whether she thought pornographic material, including a graphic account of anal sex, was appropriate for children or educational purposes.
With degrees in journalism and political science, Monroe Harless recently graduated from the University of Georgia.
