Kenosha, Wisconsin’s school libraries include 162 books with sexually explicit, pro-transgender, pro-abortion, and anti-Christian books, concerned locals say.
Blaise Mahoney, a volunteer teacher at a local Catholic church, said many books were so sexually explicit that they resembled the tactics of sexual predators he was trained to detect.
“I’m trained to report this material with individuals, and yet the school districts are allowing free access to 8-to-10-year-olds,” Mr. Mahoney told The Epoch Times. “These are grooming techniques that pedophiles use.”
Giving children free access to explicit books violates parental rights, he said.
“Parents should have the authority to know what’s in the school and be able to say, ‘I opt out,’” Mr. Mahoney said.
According to a list provided by Mr. Mahoney’s wife, Karen Mahoney, most of the books are in local elementary and middle school libraries, with 81 books in elementary school and 69 in middle school.
Mrs. Mahoney told The Epoch Times she discovered local school libraries had sexually explicit material after she learned about a drag queen story hour at nearby Racine, Wisconsin’s public library.
“I didn’t want it to come to Kenosha,” she said of radical gender activism.
She called the local librarian to voice her concerns, she told The Epoch Times.
The librarian tried to tell her about LGBT rights, Mrs. Mahoney added.
“I wrote back and said that they were grooming children and a few other things on that order,” Mrs. Mahoney said. “And she said that I broke the rules of the library. And basically, if I did anything else, I'd be banned for life from going to the library.”
This threat concerned Mrs. Mahoney, so she started looking into what was happening in local school libraries, she said. She partnered with Mass Resistance, a parental rights activism group.
Mass Resistance filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Kenosha school district to receive a list of books.
Drag for Kindergartners
With just a little research, Mrs. Mahoney said she found a shocking number of books that encouraged children into radical gender ideology. Many of these books included sexually graphic content.The books encourage radical gender ideology onto children starting at an early age, Mrs. Mahoney said. Her list of books included short summaries.
“A young princess who loves another princess, much to the disappointment of her father, the King,” the summary for “Princess Li” reads.
“A young boy faces adversity from classmates when he wears a tangerine-colored dress to school,” the summary for “Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress” reads.
Many of the other summaries are much in the same vein. The books introduce elementary schools to drag, homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexual abuse.
“They don’t belong in the library at all,” she said. “It’s probably the type of stuff that can be found in an adult bookstore,” said Mrs. Mahoney
One book in the elementary schools, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, includes a graphic description of Johnson’s first sexual experience—incestuous rape by a cousin.
Middle school and high school books carry on in much the same vein, Mrs. Mahoney’s research shows.
High schools offer children “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson. The book provides advice on sex apps, a homosexual sex guide, and an introduction to sex parties.
Politically, Kenosha leans left, Mrs. Mahoney said.
The Epoch Times contacted the Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD) but received no comment by publication time.
For Kenosha parents, these books elicit shock, Kenosha local Caleb Laitinen said. Mr. Laitinen volunteers with a local charity and has many community connections, he said.
“In our local community, parents, grandparents, teachers, other involved citizens who are politically active, all are just outraged at this,” he said. “Not only do these books have no literary value, but they’re pornographic. They’re obscene.”
Mr. Laitinen added that Kenosha is in a “spiritual battle” to protect children from corruption.
“There’s nothing more important to preserve than the purity and the innocence of children,” Mr. Laitinen said. “And there’s no place where children should be safer than school where they are a captive audience. They’re compelled to be present.”
He noted that it’s unclear how long these books have been in schools or how they arrived.
Battle of the Books
Although it may seem shocking to see sexually graphic books encourage child sex change, it’s a common phenomenon across America.Parents have documented a surge in sexually explicit books in schools, according to BookLooks.
When parents have attempted to oppose sexually explicit books in schools, it has often resulted in political controversy.
In many places, radical gender activists have accused parents who want to remove sexually explicit books of hating homosexuality or trying to enact “book bans.”
In other places, the American Library Association (ALA) has pushed for the inclusion of pro-radical gender ideology books on children.
The ALA’s website describes attempts to remove books like “All Boys Aren’t Blue” as “censorship.”
Every book on the group’s list of the top 13 most-challenged books lists “claimed to be sexually explicit” as the reason for its attempted removal from the library, the ALA’s website notes.
These books include the graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe. This book has illustrations of sex acts and pedophilia.
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison also makes the list. It includes pedophilic sex scenes from the pedophile’s perspective.
Another book on the list, “Flamer by Mike Curato,” includes a scene where friends bully a boy to drink their sexual bodily fluids.
The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom said that 2022 saw the most attempts at “book bans” since the office’s founding.
In 2021, there were 729 challenges against school library books, but in 2022, the number jumped to 1,269 challenges, the ALA’s website said.
Book challenges have also increased in strength, the ALA said. Before 2020, parents usually brought challenges against one book at a time. But in 2022, 90 percent of book challenges asked for the removal of multiple titles, the group said.
Board Meeting
Both Mr. Mahoney and Mr. Laitinen spoke against the sexually explicit books at a KUSD board meeting.
“It’s come to our attention that dangerous forms of activism have infiltrated the libraries of KUSD schools,” Mr. Laitinen said. “Pornographic content harms children and can scar them for life.”
He told the board that he and other citizens planned to create a local chapter of Mass Resistance.
“This is just the beginning, and there is a lot of work to be done,” said Mr. Laitinen. “We hope that many will join us in this ongoing effort and the school board will stand firmly with him as it’s carried out.”
“We need the KUSD to pass clear-cut material collections policies so that none of this smut is available to our kids in the future, as well as parents’ rights policies so that the adults in the district who advocated for and allowed these resources to be made available aren’t allowed to abuse groom and transition children without parental knowledge as is becoming more common,” Mr. Mahoney said.
No one at the meeting spoke against them.
A few present at the meeting clapped for them both, and the school board thanked them for their comments.
