A South Carolina school hid LGBTQ and BLM materials from parents by restricting access to a catalog, according to a Daily Signal report.
Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group, shared internal documents with the outlet, saying, “Instead of listing these books as available in the library, they are making a conscious decision to include them in curriculum read aloud in class so parents don’t know.”
In one email, Powdersville High School librarian Jen Chesney wrote, “We had to remove our card catalogs form online, so parents can’t scour it for critical race theory books (sigh).”
In another email, Chesney wrote, “The Moms of Liberty are coming hard at us with book challenges (mind you, the leader of the group doesn’t even have a child in our district – *grrrr*), so we’re going to need to tread lightly with our topical choices. They have their censoring guns loaded.”
A librarian at Wagener-Salley High School, Heather Loy, wrote in a 2022 email, “As much as they don’t want to [hear] it, parents should only be allowed to have a say in THEIR children’s access not what is provided to all students access. Parents should not be included in collection development.”
Parents have overwhelmingly complained about their children being exposed to explicit materials in the classroom.
In December, a police officer was called to a middle school in Massachusetts after an anonymous parent said that a frequently-banned book on gender ideology was being read.
The book, “Gender Queer,” features sexually explicit material and was banned for two years across the United States.
Police Chief Paul Storti told Boston.com that because the “complaint was made directly to the police department, we are obligated and have a duty to examine the complaint further.”
District Superintendent Peter Dillion said in a statement that he would have “preferred that the complaint came to the school or district and not the police. We have systems to respond to concerns about curriculum.”
