Maybe the parents of Brainerd have finally decided their children
are theirs, not the government’s

In what seems to be the exception rather than the rule, when parents began reading the pornography that the Brainerd Public school district allowed in its school libraries, the school board members didn’t try to shut them up, but instead were horrified.

When Kevin Boyles, the board chair, attempted to move on from the public comment without addressing the concerns, [D.J.] Dondelinger told him to “hold on a second.” He told Boyles that he would like to make a motion to discuss the book at the next board meeting. “Something needs to be done,” Dondelinger said. “I’m shocked. We need to dig in and find out what the hell’s going on.”

He then proceeded to ask if “this stuff is accessible to fifth graders” and was told by the room of concerned citizens that yes, it was.

Boyles said that they would address the topic at the board’s retreat that took place on June 16, saying that he didn’t think a board meeting was the appropriate venue for a discussion about it initially. “I think it’s fair to say that several of us have questions,” he said.

Dondelinger pushed back, asking for a second to his motion to add the books to the agenda for the next school board meeting, to the applause of the audience.

I have embedded video of this board meeting, cued to when the parents begin reading. If you want to skip listening to badly written porn, Dondelinger’s demand for action begins at the 31 minute point of the video.

It seems that Boyles, the board chairman, clearly doesn’t want this topic discussed in public, possibly because he knows in a public forum the decision to remove the books would have to happen. Dondelinger seems to recognize this, and pushes back, making sure the issue will be discussed publicly. We can expect that next board meeting, on July 10th, to be well attended by parents. We can also expect the board to be under great pressure to remove the books because of this.

What baffles me is how rare it is for school board members to react as Dondelinger did. It seems plain common sense and basic decency to be disgusted immediately by these facts, and want to move quickly to remove these books from school libraries where little children can read them. Such removal isn’t book banning, it is simply applying the same standards the movie rating system applies to movies, keeping inappropriate material away from children. We should have been seeing school boards routinely respond in this manner to quickly and without protest move to remove such pornography from their libraries.

Instead, what we have seen in the past two years is either a silent stonewalling, where the school board listens and then moves on (like Boyles tried to do), making believe the parents’ complaints did not even exist, or direct action by school boards to censor parents, to prevent them from even raising the issue. Sometimes the latter even involves school boards suing or arresting parents for daring to speak up.

Kudos to Dondelinger to speaking up, and kudos to the board members who voted with him to make sure this issue is addressed at the next public board meeting. Note that Dondelinger and two other board members were only recently elected, and likely have arrived unwilling to go along to get along.

Now we need to see this happen nationwide, at all school board meetings. It long past time for people to stop reacting in fear of the queer agenda, and push back at its corrupting influences, hard.