Karen England (00:01):

Hey everybody, Karen England here with a kitchen table activist. This is where we take you from being a keyboard warrior to being a citizen lobbyist. And we are gonna reclaim our schools, reclaim our parental rights and reclaim our country. So today we're gonna talk about the graphic pictures, curricula, everything that's given into our schools. And one of the main avenues that's allowed it while there are ma more than one. I wanna talk about kind of the, the foundation of it, you know, what's allowing it and, and how we can start to remove this stuff. And it's all about the word obscenity and obscenity being allowed in schools. So hold onto your seats. So when obscenity laws came about and they were put into the penal code, and so when you're going to, if something's obscene and let's see, I give it to my neighbor's kid, I can get in trouble for exposing them to graphic materials.

Karen England (01:06):

However, when that definition of obscenity came out and all those laws came out, there were 44 states that went in and they said, you know what? We want to have exemptions on a, when it comes to obscenity for law libraries, public schools and for universities. And so that's what it, it came about. So chances are that you are in one of the states that has an exemption for obscenity. And again, 44 states ha have exemptions, Tennessee, California, Nevada. I mean, there are several 44, so you're gonna need to find out. And I'll talk about that as far as, you know, how you can find out what, what the law is in your, in your state, but what would be illegal somewhere else outside of, of the schoolhouse walls is legal and protected in that school. And that needs to change. And while I, I have issues with public libraries, which are paid for, with community tax dollars, I wanted to talk specifically about schools.

Karen England (02:22):

Let's tackle one problem at a time <affirmative> so we've got these exemptions to obscenity. So that means when you go in, you go in to your school district. And again, things that someone would be sued in the workplace for sexual harassment, it's allowed to be shown to your child. It's allowed to be discussed with your child. Your child is allowed to read it. And so that is how a lot of this stuff is getting in. And when you look at it, you go, wow, how how's this in? How is this allowed in school? That's why same with, with public libraries, people would be surprised to know that people can go in and, and look at porn in the public school libraries. And a lot of people do that a lot of, so you need to know that's going on again, we're gonna tackle getting it out of the schools, get organized, and then we'll go after the public libraries.

Karen England (03:21):

But a lot of it comes back to the idea that there is a, a free speech issue. And while I'm not an attorney, I just play one at work. I'm gonna talk a little bit about that because free speech is protected and the that's gonna come up later when we talk about things. So what happened was with these obscenity laws and why we're kind of stuck with them was a case out of California. And it was a case back in 1973, and it was Miller V, California. And the, the us Supreme court decided that it has to meet kind of three criteria. And you've gotta hit all three in order for something to be obscene and removed. So you've gotta meet these three things to then get it removed from the school. So the average person applying a contemporary community standard has to find the work to be kind of sexual in nature.

Karen England (04:23):

And the word they use talks about being creating a, a sexual feeling. Number two, whether the work meaning like the book depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct, specifically designed by the applicable state law and every state has a law on obscenity. Problem is schools are exempt from it. So you need to look up what your state law is on obscenity in general, and, and look at at what that definition is. And then number three, whether the work, again, the book, the piece of art taken as lack, serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. So you've got a textbook or a book a lot of times, like in the AP classes, or, I mean, we're finding this stuff even down in kindergarten in your school library, a lot of, of the books that are in there, they will argue, well, a lot of times they will argue a librarian keeps it because they say, oh, well, it's, it meets community standards. Well, it might meet that librarian's community standards, but I don't think it meets the rest of the community standards. And so often what they consider graphic, or it, we would consider graphic. They say, oh, well, that's really okay. Your kids just need to grow up. You're sheltering them. The other argument all the time that librarians and those are the, those are the curators of the books. They make the decision about what books go in the library and

Karen England (05:56):

On the shelf. So keep in mind when they come up and they argue, oh, you want a book band? You want a book band? No, right now the librarians banning certain books. I just wanna have a say in what books are curated. So that that's a whole nother podcast where we talk about kind of how you, how you deal with going up against your local school board or your legislature, you know, when you're, you're being screamed at for banning books. So the other thing that librarians come up with, remember, I just said, number three of the Miller test is the work taken as a whole lack, serious literary value. So often you'll notice that a lot of these books with really graphic scenes of rape or incest, or, you know, just a lot of sexual exploration that they often have an award on it by some liberal book company that gives them an award.

Karen England (06:57):

And so the librarians says, well, I can't remove this because of the Miller test it's got serious literary value. No, it doesn't. If you were to take this before the community, the community would agree that it lacks serious literary value. The community's entirely different than the library association. And you need to understand that, that our library associations have been taken over just like the, the local teachers union, you know, everything we learned about what was going on in COVID and the people we thought were our friends and we thought were gonna back up the parents and that they were our partners in, in, you know, when we turned our kids over to them for, for the school day. And we found out, wow, they're not really on our side, nor is the librarian association. I hate to say it, but it's true. So what happened there was that Miller test back in 1973, and there was a case, and it was brought before the us Supreme court and the Supreme court came out and it said he outlined what, what the, the, the majority outlined the guidelines for what is considered obscenity for jurors.

Karen England (08:05):

So they, they named it all out. And at the time this Miller who brought it, he wanted there to be an obscenity standard. That was totally national, that would apply to everybody that, Hey, this is what obscenity is. And if it falls under this, everyone has to supplies. But the majority came out and they said, no, the majority of the Supreme court in their ruling, they said, it's not realistic or constitutionally sound to read the first amendment as required that all the people of Maine or Mississippi accept public depictions of conduct found tolerable in Las Vegas or New York city. So it has to be local what San Francisco is okay with and pushing and promoting is different than what Clarksville Tennessee is going to push or promote. And so there needs to be that community standard, which we talked about in number one of three for the whole Miller case.

Karen England (09:04):

And so that's, that's where we're at. The problem is that those 44 states went in exempted schools from that the, and then of course, while we weren't paying attention prior to COVID all of this, these different schools put in place, these policies that they decided are the way a parent can object to a book, and often the way a parent objects to a book, is it stacked against the parent? And so the process, and that's the number one thing you need to do. You need to find out the process to challenge a book in your local school district. So that will be on your, your handout to find out the policy of your local school district to challenge a book and, and then the appeal process as well. And so often the challenge and the appeal process takes quite a bit out of you. And again, it's stacked against you.

Karen England (10:04):

It usually is, you know, the librarian makes the decision. And then after the librarian, you know, you have to appeal, then you have to appeal to the board and you, it, it, just to me, I, I just think it's crazy. All the, all the hoops they make parents do up through, which is why we want to change state laws to make it more parent friendly at the local school dis school district to challenge these things. So the first thing you need to do is find out what your local school board policy is because you can change the local school board policy, your school board works for you. And if their policy has a bunch of hoops to jump through before you can remove a book, then that needs to change the one big OB objection that you're going to get. In addition to book banning that they're gonna, they're gonna call you, they're going to say that, you know well, the whole literary value, all of that, but again, let the community decide, you know, if you've got a school board member that, that thinks that's got literary value, then you might wanna, you know, something, that's got a graphic rape scene.

Karen England (11:15):

You might wanna vote them out of office the next time you might wanna run against them yourself. So when you're talking about going up against a policy and we will have model policies eventually on our website and, and will help you with our kitchen table activists to try and go up against your local school board, when you go, the other thing they're gonna bring up is called the Pico case. You'll hear that a lot. And, and you know, their legal council will send you something on the PECO case, because again, remember how I talked about this is also a first amendment issue, obscenity isn't, but political and, and objectionable speech. All of that is so you can't object to a book because it talks about adultery. That's just an idea that you might find offensive, but if it's a graphic sex scene, you can, and that's what the Pico case decided that you can't throw something is not obscene, just because you don't like the idea or the political point of view.

Karen England (12:18):

And so I hope you're tracking with me that there's a real difference between the sexual graphic stuff. And then just disagreeing with a political point of view or a speech or ideas that you don't agree with, that you wouldn't be able to throw out in, in a local school district. So a, a couple of things you need to find out what your local school board policy is and the appeal process, and you need to find out what is in your local school district. So there are a lot of books that are in there, and that I'm telling you, you are gonna want to challenge. And we're gonna put a video when I testified at the Tennessee legislature in let's see, 20, 22 just recently in 2022. And I read from a book that is currently as we speak still in a Nashville school, and it could be in yours. So I'm gonna sign off on the issue of pornography. I wanna encourage you that it is up to us to save our kids. No one's gonna do it for us and that parents and grandparents and community members, it's you that have been called for such a time as this.