Moms for Liberty read ‘porn’ hoping to ban books, as Seminole school board listens

SANFORD — Moms for Liberty, the conservative group founded in Florida and now a force in national politics, aimed to get books pulled from Seminole County Public Schools libraries by reading aloud at a school board meeting this week book passages they said amounted to “porn.”

The group’s Seminole chapter, following a playbook used successfully in recent weeks in Indian River and Pinellas counties, urged supporters to read “potty” words and the “worst of the worst,” with the hope the school board would cut them off.

A new state law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May heightens scrutiny of school books and says if school boards prevent parents from reading aloud books that have been objected to, those books must be removed from the shelves.

“Just make sure that you get shut down, that’s the goal,” said Jessica Tillmann, the group’s chapter chair in an Instagram post Monday.

The Seminole County School Board on Tuesday night, however, listened without interruption as Moms for Liberty members and supporters read short book excerpts, in almost all cases without naming the book or the author.

Aranda Davidson read a section from a book she said was available in a Seminole middle school, that she said contained expletives and sexually explicit passages. “My 11-year-old should not be able to get ahold of a book like this,” she said.

But the majority of those who packed into the board’s room for a more than four-hour meeting urged board members not to ban books nor give into the “theater” of the read-aloud.

Making the counterpoint

Stop Moms for Liberty Seminole and Defense of Democracy Seminole helped organize a counter-point and were joined by statewide groups and residents from Polk, Sarasota and Volusia counties.

They waved red sheets of paper to show their opposition to speakers and green to show their approval, including for Rain Johnson of Lakeland, who held and read briefly from a copy of “The Handmaid’s Tale” to show her opposition to book bans.

They said a loud minority should not be able to dictate what other people’s children can choose to read. They also questioned how the board could act if the books were unnamed and said out-of-context passages should not be considered when deciding whether books meet the legal definition of pornography.

“A book is far more than an isolated passage or two,” said one.

“For the sake of the children, please don’t give into this theater,” said another.

“Some bad actors are here to disrupt the meeting with requests to ban books from public school classrooms, reading lists, and media centers,” said Oviedo resident Franklin Perez.

All students deserve to read a variety of books, Perez said, and the board should trust teachers and media specialists to pick appropriate titles for their libraries.

“Seminole County Public Schools is a premier school district and has been for decades. Let’s not tarnish that reputation and high standing by allowing for the intimidation of public-school educators into removing books for our public schools,” he said.

The school board took no action after listening to about 80 speakers.

“There is no action to be taken from the reading of excerpts as they were allowed to make their public comments without interruption,” said school district spokeswoman Katherine Crnkovich, in an email Wednesday. “We would encourage any individual or group with concerns about a book or curriculum to follow the process in place to address their concern.”

That process is posted on the district website and starts with a person filing a complaint at the school where the book is housed.

Earlier this month, Tillmann sent school board member Amy Pennock a list of nearly 60 books she said contained “inappropriate material,” according to a copy of the email obtained by a parent through a public records request and shared with the Orlando Sentinel.

It was not clear if her group read from some of the books on the list. Most of the speakers read from sheets of paper, not books, often citing their count of expletives in the book before reading a passage. On Instagram, Tillmann said the group would not name the books as they did not want to draw more attention to titles they disliked.

Crnkovich said that ahead of the meeting a district administrator shared the SCPS book challenge process with Tillmann, but it was not clear Wednesday whether she or other Moms for Liberty members had filed any challenges..

Tillmann could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

She spoke early in the meeting, telling the crowd, “If you have children in the room, please remove them.”

Later, she said her group had been complaining about certain books for more than a year and wanted the board to take action against “horrible” “disgusting” and “illegal books.”

School board members said the district would follow state law and its policies to address any concerns about books and other instructional materials.

Not ‘evading the law’

Board member Autumn Garrick pushed back against some of the charges leveled against the district during the meeting.

“We do not have teachers that are groomers,” she said. “We do not have a superintendent that is evading the law.”

And in the 10 months since she was elected to the school board, no one has contacted her about a school book they found troubling. “I, in fact, have never heard from a parent. Not one parent in my 10 months of service has complained they wanted a book removed or reviewed from SCPS,” Garrick said.

“I am happy to make sure we are diligent in our process,” she added.

The new state law (HB 1069) makes challenges to school books easier and, if the concern is sexual content, requires the books to be removed from the shelves within five days and remain inaccessible to students while being reviewed.

It also says that if books cannot be read aloud at board meetings, “the school district shall discontinue the use of the material.” Republican lawmakers said they passed it to make sure pornography and books that depict sexual activity are kept from children.

But critics say the effort has wrongly labeled many books pornographic, when state law says, in part, that books with sexual content or nudity are considered pornography only if they are “without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

They also say the law is being used to do end runs around district policies for book challenges, which typically start at the school and require reviews by educators and parents.

In Indian River at a meeting in late August, the school board’s chair stopped many speakers from reading aloud explicit passages and then the board voted to remove at least 20 books from its libraries. This month, that district said more than 120 books are under review after challenges by the local Moms for Liberty group, Treasure Coast Newspapers reported.

And this week, the Pinellas County school district said it would remove five books, some of which were read aloud at an earlier meeting in August, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

200 at the meeting

At Seminole’s Tuesday night meeting, which drew more than 200 people, Sandra Gonzalez said there were 342 inappropriate words in one book she looked at, and she did not understand why it would be in an SCPS school.

“Why should a child be exposed to pornography?” she asked.

“Who’s accountable?” said Chas Barber, a Casselberry resident, who read an excerpt from a book. “Please consider the law and your responsibility to uphold it.”

But others argued sex scenes do not equate to pornography and that the effort aimed to get rid of books about tough topics, such as rape and child abuse, and books that featured LGBTQ characters or characters who were not white. Library books that describe a range of experiences are important to students, perhaps making them feel less alone or making them empathize with others, they said.

“Books help students learn about the vast world,” said Sandy Stenoff, another Casselberry resident, who urged the board not to pull books.

Stenoff noted that Moms for Liberty was not pushing to have the Bible removed “though the good book is filled with morally questionable behavior.”

Some of the books targeted by Moms for Liberty are award-winning and well-regarded, such as “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Looking for Alaska” by John Green.

Maria Olivero, a Lake Mary resident, said parents upset about certain books should not set policy for everyone.

“They do not speak for my family,” Olivero said. “Let’s learn from each other’s stories.”