Virginia’s largest school division put a “sex therapist” who promotes “kinky” acts like BDSM — a form of physical abuse geared to those who are aroused by humiliation — in charge of deciding whether to heed parent complaints about books that may be inappropriate for children, The Daily Wire has learned.
Fairfax County School Board chair Karl Frisch, a gay activist who recently became chairman of the school board, appointed Laila Cooper, the sex therapist, to the Challenged Materials Interdepartmental Review Committee on January 25, according to public school board documents. The appointment put Cooper in position to assess any request received by the school district about books.
“This Committee is activated only if a Fairfax County or City resident, without a student enrolled in a school, submits a formal request to remove a book or other media from FCPS,” it explained. “If a request is received, committee members will review the request, read or view the material identified, evaluate and discuss the request, and submit an individual vote to uphold or deny removal of the material from FCPS.”
The appointment of Laila Cooper, the sex therapist, is a provocative gesture intended to signal that although the school system technically has a process for registering complaints about obscene materials, such complaints are likely to be essentially thrown in the trash, parents told The Daily Wire.
In a professional bio of Cooper, she states, “I work from an affirming and social justice approach with the LGBTQIA community and people of color, and I am kink- and non-monogamy informed and affirming… My work is focused on sex and gender issues (including transgender issues), sexual orientation, kink/BDSM, and interpersonal relationships (including couples, polyamory, family dyads).”
Cooper’s work, according to her website, “includes but is not limited to: navigating non-monogamy (i.e., polyamory, open relationships, swingers, monogamish, throuples, etc.), kinky sex (e.g., BDSM, group sex, fetish), painful sex, difficulty with orgasm, erection issues, shame and anxiety related to sex, out of control sexual behavior (aka sex addiction), sexual orientation, and gender transition. I work with all genders, sexualities, and relationship formats from an informed, non-judgmental, affirming, and celebratory stance.”
Her practice also includes providing paperwork that people can use to get gender surgery. “As ethically possible, I provide all documentation necessary to do this following a consultation with you,” she says. “I work from an informed consent model, wherein my goal is to advocate for and help you achieve the care you need and desire.”
She also writes doctor’s notes intended to help illegal immigrants convince a court that they need asylum. “As a longstanding advocate for the human rights of immigrants, I offer psychological evaluations (in English and Spanish) that accompany other legal documentation for asylum, human trafficking, and other immigration-related cases,” her website says.
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After The Daily Wire asked Frisch and Cooper about the appointment, Cooper said she has stepped down from the committee to avoid political damage to Frisch.
“Yes I was recently appointed to the Challenged Materials Committee,” Cooper said in an email. “I applied for the committee as an involved mother who cares about the school community and, in particular, about access to diverse reading materials. Although that was the extent of my discussion with Mr. Frisch regarding my desire to be on the committee, I understand that my professional background is causing distraction from the important work being done by him and other members of the school board; thus I have stepped down from the role. My work as a licensed clinical psychologist is unrelated to my desire to be on the committee,” she said in an email.
The appointment has not previously been reported, and she did not say when she tendered her resignation.
Frisch did not respond to a request for comment, and Fairfax County Public Schools spokeswomen Hellen Lloyd and Julie Moult did not reply to a request for the names of current committee members.
Brooke Corbett, a Fairfax mother, said she feels “like FCPS school board members live in an alternate reality” for thinking that out of all the county’s 1.4 million residents, someone who makes their living “affirming” “kinks” would be the right person to decide whether residents are correct to think a book is inappropriate.
“A ‘professional’ with such credentials, assigned to a panel to adjudicate what is deemed appropriate material flagged by concerned taxpayers, will most certainly be biased in the determination of what’s appropriate to sit on our kids’ school library shelves, what’s presented to them in the classrooms and assemblies, in Family Life Education/sex-ed instruction, and what’s sanctioned to be presented in after-school clubs,” Corbett told The Daily Wire.
“The biases someone like Cooper brings to this role promote and enable grooming behavior of our children, plain and simple. It makes me suspicious and want to know what is Frisch’s motivation in supporting individuals and groups who normalize sexually explicit, disordered, adult practices to children… I hope all parents and concerned citizens take note of Frisch’s decisions,” she added.
Frisch is a career Democrat operative who in 2019 ran for school board despite the fact that he had no children and no college degree, the book Race to the Bottom reported. After he was elected to office, his Twitter account, on which he often posted school board content, followed multiple accounts dedicated to tweeting hardcore pornography, it found.
When he was sworn in this year for his second term, he took his oath of office with his hand not on a Bible, but on a stack of books depicting gay sex.
Sexual orientation is a primary focus of his interest in policy, the book reported. In 2012, he warned that if Mitt Romney won the presidency, Romney would modify the U.S. Constitution and force gays to leave the country.
He won his seat on the suburban school board in 2019 by nationalizing a local race, raising money from leftist activists across the country by invoking gay issues. Tapping people in places like California to fund a school board race in Virginia, he raised $183,000, far more than anyone had ever raised for the position. One school board fundraising event advertised an appearance by a drag queen.
In 2021, a Fairfax review committee voted to keep “Gender Queer” in schools, claiming that the cartoon is “scientifically based” and that its images, including of a woman performing oral sex on a transgender person, “do not qualify as obscene.” In the book, the narrator visits the headquarters of a porn company that produced films called “Public Disgrace,” “Bound in Public,” and “Hardcore Gangbangs.” The book’s author, Maia Kobabe, said she does not recommend it for children.
A review committee said that the book Lawn Boy — which includes the words, “What if I told you I touched another guy’s d***? What if I told you I sucked it? I was ten years old, but it’s true. I sucked Doug Goble’s d**” — has “literary value as a narrative representing the perspective of a significant portion of students in Fairfax County Public Schools.”
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