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A SCHOOL BOARD in Florida interrupted a parent’s speech and cut off his microphone as he was about to read the “pornographic” content of one of the books on display in his children’s school library.
Bruce Friedman, whose children attend schools in Clay County, attempted to read extracts from three books he found in the libraries of the Oakleaf School and Fleming Island School.
As he announced the title of the first book, Lucky, in which author Alice Sebold documents her experience of rape in her early college years, the school board’s attorney turned off the microphone and asked him to “hush [his] mouth.”
“I know you can discuss the process by which these books get on the shelves because there’s a Clay County employee that got paid to put this book, ‘Lucky’ by Alice Sebold. I’m going to read things; if children are watching, cover their ears,” Friedman said.
The board’s attorney stopped him before he could read the first word. “If you hush your mouth for a minute and listen, instead of just talking, you might learn something,” the moderator said in the face of Friedman’s resistance.
School board acknowledges pornographic content
When the father insisted that his speaking rights be restored, the head of the school board responded: “You’ll get it back, but you’ll get it back to talk about something besides reading pornography into a public television set.”
The board argued that because it was a televised meeting on prime time, Friedman could have broken federal state laws that prohibit him from “publishing these things to children.”
In an interview for Fox News Digital, Friedman said that “somebody failed drastically in their mission to protect children”; and that the content of these books is “so vile” that if he had read it on the air, the interview would have had to be censored.
For Friedman, president of Florida No Left Turn in Education, the fact that the board barred his testimony represents an “admission” by administrators that such “clearly pornographic” content can be found in public school libraries.
