BRISTOL — An angry and unruly crowd confronted the Newfound Area School Board on March 11 over alleged licentious policy decisions that have made sexually explicit reading material available to students. Demanding that the school board immediately remove those books from the school library, they quoted directly from the controversial All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Looking For Alaska by John Green, and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe.
One parent told the board that they had adopted a Ukrainian child from an abusive family, believing she would be safe in America, but instead, “they’re getting introduced to this filth”.
“When you allow negative material into a school, it is your fault,” she said. “You put it there, you allowed it there. And I’m not talking about gay content. I’m talking about the sexual content. I have gay children, so that’s not even a problem. Kids should not be watching this, reading this, or looking at this. This needs to be taken care of right away.”
All Boys Aren’t Blue is a series of personal essays describing Johnson’s childhood and adolescence growing up as a gay black man. It has been challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, profanity, and sexually explicit content.
Looking For Alaska, a young adult novel described as a “stunning look at friendship, love, and life”, contains scenes of drug use, hazing, and sexually explicit encounters.
Gender Queer, described as “a useful and touching guide on gender identity — what it means and how to think about it — for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere,” has been criticized for LGBTQIA+ content and sexually explicit images.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to By The Way to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.