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CHESTER COUNTY, Pennsylvania (LifeSiteNews) – A Pennsylvania mother will sue her son’s school district for keeping sexually explicit material in the school library.
Fenicia Redman, speaking to the Epoch Times, said that she also seeks a nationwide ban on such material in school libraries.
“I want a nationwide emergency injunction before these kids go back to school,” Redman said. “I am the mother of a child who is being criminally victimized.”
Redman’s son attends school in the Greater Valley School District in Chester County, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Redman told the Times that when she first approached the district about sexually explicit books in school libraries, the district dismissed her as “homophobic.” She said that when she addressed the issue at a school board meeting, she was assaulted by other parents at the meeting.
Redman then went to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital, in June with other parents from the district. Capitol police told her that the posters that she and other parents were carrying, enlarged images from school library books including Maia Kobebe’s Gender Queer, were offensive to people and warned her that children could see them.
Redman then visited the office of State Senator Doug Mastriano, a Republican. Mastriano, who is running for governor of Pennsylvania, expressed shock at the posters, telling the Delaware Valley Journal that his jaw dropped. He had previously cosponsored bills that would require school districts to notify parents about sexually explicit books in school libraries and prohibit instruction on sexuality in classes K-5.
Speaking to the Times, Redman said “I have a fire in my belly, and the only thing that will quench it is to see these people in jail.” She is preparing the lawsuit herself and has already informed the district of her intent to sue.
According to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) website, something is considered explicit if it passes the Miller Test. The test lists three criteria that determine if something is obscene. If the average person finds the material depicted appeals to prurient interests, or that it is lascivious or scatological in nature; or if the average person finds that the sexual depiction is blatantly offensive; or if the average person finds that the sexual depiction is of little artistic, literary, scientific, or political value, then it is considered obscene.
The issue of sexually explicit books in school libraries has appeared in the news in recent months.
A man in Florida was escorted out of a school board meeting last October for reading offensive passages from Gender Queer. A similar occurrence happened in Fairfax County, Virginia, in November when a parent was asked to refrain from reading Gender Queer aloud at a meeting as children were present. The book was put back on Fairfax County school shelves after a brief ban. In May, a Virginia judge sided with parents and ruled that sexually explicit material is too obscene to be in school libraries.
READ: Idaho high school removes pornographic books thanks to parents’ persistence
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In Idaho, a school district removed sexually explicit books from school libraries after parents persistently petitioned the books’ removal.