Students as young as 13 in Leander Independent School District, Austin, TX, have been exposed to graphic sexual content as part of their course work, including graphic verbal depictions of gang rape and other sexual acts.
Much of the content is too explicit to post on this site, but the TEACH Parental Rights Coalition provides excerpts and screenshots of extended passages here (fair warning, it is nauseating).
A sample (and comparably “tame”) passage from a book featured on an 11th grade reading list for the district reads: “she reached inside his pants, then into his underwear, and wrapped her hand around him. He bit down hard on his bottom lip, closed his eyes and waited for what came next. He was terrified of what came next.”
You get the picture.
According to parent Emily Long, who has been at the center of the fight, parents were initially alerted to the problem in August of 2020 when children told their parents how uncomfortable they were in class. Unsurprisingly, parents in the district complained.
According to one parent who spoke to The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity, their concerns were not received with tolerance by some involved in the process. Proponents of the pornographic content, allegedly including both teachers and parents, lashed out at the concerned parents, calling them “religious zealots, bigots” and “racists.” The harassment did not end at name-calling. There were also…“d**ks.”
“Some of the people speaking out have received anonymous cardboard penises in the mail with anti-Christian messages calling them names such as c**t,” one concerned parent told The Daily Wire. “Others have received dead animals on their porches,” the parent claimed.
Photographs of the phallic cardboard cutouts were provided to The Daily Wire by Long. Check out the “d**k pics” below and see if you can identify a theme.
One reads “He has risen” and includes a crown of thorns. “He is risen INDEED. Stay hateful your bigoted c**t” the back of it reads. The postal packaging reads “fondle with care.”
A more intellectually ambitious message accompanying a phallus festooned with glitter reads, “Hope this sparkling d**k calms your fear mongering you book hating philistine.”
The irony of decrying “bigotry” while simultaneously targeting a specific religion hardly requires commentary in 2021. Radical activists have been pioneers on the cutting edge of bigotry for at least a decade, which is why so many have abandoned the left, myself included.
While the mindbending degeneracy of these activists is mildly humorous, the situation in Austin is not. Some parents in the district are desperate. “We don’t know where to turn,” one parent told me. “We are stuck paying tax dollars to a district who refuses to listen and is rolling out their new social studies curriculum in the fall.”
According to one concerned parent, the district made only token efforts to accommodate parental concerns. In November of 2020 the district issued a (pseudo) apology, yet failed to remove the books from the classrooms or curriculum. As of Wednesday, March 23, 2021, the books were still in use in the classrooms, according to teachers at the school who communicated with the PTA.
In their utterly anemic public statement, the district attempted to blame the debacle on, you guessed it, Covid. The blame-shifting statement reads:
In Spring 2020, this review took place when we closed our buildings and all staff worked virtually from home due to COVID. We selected the specific titles after the Board of Trustees approved a framework for the adoption, not including the book titles or themes, during the March 12, 2020 Board of Trustees meeting.
We over-relied on written reviews and recommendations. We chose not to purchase the multiple copies of each title necessary to mail them to teachers. At the time, we were not allowing any non-essential employees in buildings and we were not distributing any supplies. Teachers were not able to thoroughly read each book. Some books containing passages not suitable for students made it through this flawed vetting process. We acknowledge this breakdown in the process and apologize for selecting inappropriate literature for the assigned students’ ages.
According to one parent I spoke to, the school district initially “put together a book vetting process to appease the parents. But the curriculum directors who chose the books are running [the process],” thus creating an evaluation process that is “completely skewed.” The contentious books are either “passing anyway or being moved to a different grade level or to the school library,” the parent claimed.
According to Long, at the most recent school board meeting on March 25, 2021, it was determined that several of the books would be pulled from classrooms until the vetting process was complete. This was the first “win” for concerned parents in almost 8 months. As of publication, only about a third of the “book club” books have been vetted, with several slated for removal. According to Long, teachers in the school have confirmed the books have, at long last, been removed from classrooms.
As of publication, the battle over the books in LISD remains contentious, with activist teachers allegedly recruiting students to protest in favor of the books, rallying them around concerns about racism and homophobia. Long also suggested some involved may be connected to a well-funded left-wing organization.
Meanwhile, many teachers oppose the books but are afraid to speak out. “It has created a really toxic environment at the school,” says Long.
The burning question many of us have is what on earth was the purpose of including these books in the curriculum in the first place? According to Long, teachers claim that these books give “diverse perspectives.” The majority of the erotic novels include characters of color and or LGBTQ+ characters. The claim, thus, is that rejection of these books is a rejection of stories told by those types of characters.
Still trying to wrap our minds around the reasoning, one might ask, why must books about diverse characters include graphic sexual content? Long says teacher advocates claim that “students are encountering this adult material in their lives, or soon will be, so it’s important to expose them in an environment where they can ask questions” (an odd claim, considering broad research indicates that Gen Z teens are waiting longer to have sex and are less sexually experienced in their teen years than were previous generations).
In a truly mind-bending twist, Long states that the district has proposed bringing in counselors to help the students process the content they are reading, as it can be disturbing.
It’s also fair to ask why the books were kept in the curriculum for 8 months after parent complaints. The schools were operating with a loophole called the “book club,” which meant the students were not “forced” to read any one specific book, but rather had the “option” to select from a range of books, including some options that did not feature graphic sexual depictions, says Long.
However, the books were utilized during class time in small group settings, meaning that students were exposed to discussions about the books even if they themselves did not choose to read them. Also, as could be expected, chatter about the books was not localized to the students who read them, or even the class in which they were assigned. As any thinking adult may have predicted, pornographic content spreads like wildfire in a highschool.
According to the parent who initially contacted The Daily Wire about this story, the books were opposed on academic grounds as well. Despite being assigned to high school English students, some of the books are written at elementary school levels. In addition to the pornographic content, parents are also concerned that their children are not being challenged with appropriately rigorous material for their age group.
The same parent also cited concerns about the epidemic of pornography addiction among adolescent boys, which mental health professionals are warning is the fastest growing addiction in America, comparable in effect on the brain to crack cocaine. Knowing this, she argues, it is unconscionable to expose children to this material (“follow the science,” as some might say).
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This story is part of my ongoing effort to expose CRT (and other degeneracy) in public schools and institutions. If you are struggling to digest the disturbing content you just read, consider contacting LISD so you can be furnished with a professional counselor to assist you. For all other feedback, contact me at [email protected]. Now you can also reach me on IG @GeorgiaMaeHowe
Notes: A previous version of this incorrectly described Long as the PTA president. A link to the TEACH Parental Rights Coalition has been added to provide more thorough excerpts of passages from the books.