Parents in the Maine School Administrative District #51 (MSAD #51) pushed back against pornographic books in the district’s school libraries at a chaotic Monday evening School Board meeting.
The brouhaha follows the district’s July Board meeting, which abruptly adjourned following one Cumberland parent, Scott Jordan, raising his concerns to the Board about the sexually explicit book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe being in the Greely High School Library.
[RELATED: Maine School Board Shuts Down Discussion of Pornographic Books, Police Called on Parents]
Although the speaker prior to Jordan in the public comment section of the July meeting was given over six minutes to speak, the Board limited Jordan’s comments to three minutes, causing him to initially say he would not leave the podium.
Eventually, Jordan offered leave the podium to allow other attendees to speak — but the Board voted to adjourn the meeting anyway, shutting down the discussion of the books.
After the July meeting adjourned, a Board member — who was not identified in the Cumberland Police report — called the police on parents having a cordial conversation with Superintendent Jeff Porter outside Greely High School.
The drama resumed at Monday evening’s meeting, with Jordan returning to the podium, this time carrying blown-up sexually explicit images from Gender Queer to present to the Board.
This time around, before the public comment section, Board Chair Leanne Candura informed the audience that all speakers would be limited to three minutes per individual.
“I attended a School Board meeting on July 17th. A precedent was set that evening. Mr. Robert Vail, town councilor, was given six minutes and one second to speak — yet I was interrupted multiple times and told I could only speak three minutes,” Jordan began his public comment.
“My question, Madam Chair, is why was I interrupted, and why was that precedent set?” Jordan asked Candura. “So, people can go to war, fight for their country — but we get three minutes to come to a school board meeting where you’re not going to engage us?”
“We pay taxes. We pay you. You work for us, not the other way around,” Jordan said.
“That evening, Madam Chair, you contacted our police department, and you said a group of us were standing outside that door and would not leave. You lied,” he continued. “I have the police report to prove it.”
“You lied multiple times,” Scott said, referencing the police report which states that the parents were having a calm conversation in the Greely High School parking lot.
The caller, who was not identified as Candura in the police report, said that a group of people was “surrounding/threatening the superintendent” — a claim which the report contradicts.
Candura has not responded to a request for comment on whether she was the individual who called the police that night.
Jordan then asked Candura why Board member Megan Lichter told him at the July meeting that the characterization of Gender Queer, which contains cartoon images of children performing sex acts on each other, as pornographic was just Jordan’s interpretation.
Then, holding up a blown-up image of a page from Gender Queer showing oral sex being performed on a person wearing a strap-on dildo, Jordan asked Candura what her interpretation of the image is.
“That’s what our kids are seeing, and you’re okay with that? You’re a mother and you’re okay with that?” Jordan asked.
Chaos ensued when Jordan turned to ask the audience whether they were okay with the book being in the school library.
His question was greeted by many “No”s, but a few “Yes”s — one of the people who said yes told Jordan to read a segment from Gender Queer.
Board Chair Candura gave Jordan an additional 30 seconds to read from the book due to the audience crosstalk taking up a segment of his time.
“Fast forward, we’ve been dating for two months. We’ve made out, we’ve had sex, we’ve moved on to sexting at work. I got a new strap-on dildo harness today, I can’t wait to put it on you and fit it perfectly in my mouth,” Jordan read from Gender Queer.
“Do you want me to go on and on? Seriously? You’re okay–?” Jordan asked.
Jordan then implored Superintendent Porter to do something about the pornographic books in the district’s school libraries.
“Jeff — you’re a Christian, you’re a man of faith. Stop being lukewarm, step up as a leader. Since our town manager won’t do it, our police chief won’t do it — be a leader,” he said. “Do something about this, please. We have to save our children, this is wrong.”
The speaker following Jordan, Cumberland resident and parent Katie Simpson — who is the former Executive Director of the Maine Democratic Party — said that she grew up in rural Maine as a bisexual person “in a time when it was not safe to be a queer person.”
This experience gave Simpson the belief that “having something in the schools — I don’t really care what book, or which books — but having something that shows different ways of being in different possible lives is really important to children.”
Simpson said she told her ten-year-old child about the book Gender Queer and how people want it removed from schools.
According to Simpson, the ten-year-old said he “did not think that banning books was the way for us to make people feel more comfortable, and make people feel supported in our communities.”
“If you’re worried about kids seeing material that you’re not excited about, talk to them about it,” Simpson said.
“That’s what school is for, introducing kids to lots of different ideas,” she said. “So I would say book banning makes me pretty uncomfortable, I would urge the Board and the school not to engage in that, and to support the libraries and librarians, and engaging with students and including books that show a wide variety of different ways of being in the world.”
Although supporters of keeping the pornographic books in public schools have cast attempts to remove those books as “book banning,” all of the titles remain for sale at local bookstores, with many of them elevated in special displays because of the controversies around their explicit nature.
A tense moment occurred after Simpson used the rest of her time to wait until someone other than Scott Jordan wanted to come to the podium to speak, resulting in a crosstalk argument between her, the audience, and Board Chair Candura.
Candura called the next speaker, Zach Bouchard of Cumberland to the microphone.
“In regards to banning any of the mentioned books from the library, please don’t let the belligerence of the so-called silent majority call into question the ability of our students to learn a diverse set of ideas, which is what education is about in the first place,” Bouchard said.
Bouchard then said he had an “idea that should be taken seriously” — that the School Board should use police force to remove parents who talk about the books from public meetings.
He compared the parents who speak at Board meetings to belligerent children acting out in class, and said that local police or school resource officer should escort them out of the meetings.
The four other speakers at Monday evening’s meeting, however, disagreed with Simpson and Bouchard about banning the books from the district’s school libraries.
The first speaker during the public comment section of the meeting had a simple two-point message for the Board, that “pornography destroys,” and that it is unbelievable that “hardcore pornography” is in the district’s school libraries.
The speaker, who said he was a retired math teacher and educator for over 30 years, read an explicit passage from Gender Queer.
“What in God’s name does this have to do with reading, writing and arithmetic?” the speaker asked.
Another of the evening’s speakers, former Republican State Rep. and high school principal Mike Timmons, urged the Board to ban Gender Queer.
Timmons said that many other districts have banned Gender Queer, and is the number one most banned book in all school districts.
Data from PEN America Index of School Book Bans found that Gender Queer was tied for the most banned book in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year with 15 new bans.
In the 2021-2022 school year, Gender Queer was banned by 41 school districts.
Timmons said that parents could resort to starting a class-action lawsuit against the district in order to get the Board to ban the book.
“I hope that all those parents, School Board members, and school officials and guests here tonight agree they have responsibilities for what is right for our youth,” Timmons said.
Sandra Lee Porter, a Cumberland parent and grandparent, said that she believes the books referenced during the meeting are pornographic and should be immediately removed.
“I believe that our school teachers, our librarians, our administrators, have a duty to protect and to guide our children,” Porter said. “And when they make pornographic material available, they are not protecting, they are not guiding.”
Mary Bellino, another Cumberland resident, told the Board that she was going to bring blown-up images to the meeting from Hustler, Playboy, and Penthouse pornographic magazines to put them up beside images from Gender Queer.
“There’s no difference at all — it’s all pornography,” Bellino said. “And anyone who would deny that, to me, is disserving themselves, this city, our children. And it’s despicable.”
“I think it’s just a way to indoctrinate our children,” she said. “And it’s everywhere, it’s not just in Cumberland, it’s everywhere. And we’ve got to fight back, and I do think the silent majority will win,” Bellino said.
Maine has a law the prohibits the anyone from providing obscene material to minors.
However, there is an exception in this law for schools.
An attempts by Sen. Jim Libby (R-Cumberland) in the previous legislative session to eliminate this exception failed in the Democrat-controlled legislature.
34 Comments
Thank Ed for this very detailed and accurate account of what took place.
Parents, Grandparents please stand up for what is right… YOUR CHILDREN as their lives depend on it.
Why did Katie Simpson feel the need to tell everyone at the meeting she was bi-sexual while raising two kids? Most of my generation would have a few choice names for such an individual but we politely refrain from doing so. For the most part, we TOLERATE an individual’s right to choose his or her own lifestyle but, it doesn’t mean we have to ACCEPT it in its entirety. Additionally, anecdotes don’t necessarily make good public policy.
Zach Bouchard is a prime example of how the Left feels the need to enlist law enforcement to bludgeon conservative principles while, at the same time, they push to defund the police. Liberal logic I assume.
The elephant in the room is the undermining of the “nuclear family”. I’m sure that Full Term abortions on demand, the transgender movement to sexually mutilate minors, allowing biological males to compete against females, ridiculous pronoun usage, and obscene books in our school libraries are ALL related and are an attempt to destroy the nuclear family which is the foundation of our traditional Judeo-Christian values.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I’ve sown will never be uprooted. Destroy the family, you destroy the country.” -Vladimir Lenin
Sound familiar?
Finally, did anyone notice the irony that Rep. Stephen Moriarty and Sen. Teresa Pierce who were there early on to present an award to the Greeley girls’ field hockey team, but were also co-sponsors of LD 1619 (full term abortions). Doesn’t jive…except to a Marxist.
Disgusting that there are “parents” that are defending this garbage and are happy to provide it to kids. Truly disgusting!
Thanks for the great reporting Maine Wire.
The rhetoric of the indoctrinated left, or woke, or whatever you want to call them, is simply insane! They stand and accuse the conservative people, parents, grand parents, law makers, etc. of being trouble makers worthy of silencing and arrest. With vitriol, they call us, the ones who are calling for common sense, and for a full stop to the guiding or grooming, of children, “book banners,” aggressive, bullies, belligerent, and so forth. Wow, how hypocritical of them, and how uneducated, stupid, really. Perhaps they should have studied to show themselves approved! They say,” DON’T BAN BOOKS, but BAN FREE SPEECH”, if it doesn’t agree with their narrative and psychosis! Get off of your high horses, stand down from your bully pulpits, give up your gag orders and gavels, to go back to learning! Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil!
AMEN RENEE 🙏
Banning books is a poor excuse for anyone in favor of exploiting our young people to such filthy pornographic materials. 41 school districts know better. Southern Maine is responsible for sending legislators to Augusta who support this horrible material. Education is about teaching students how to think, not WHAT to think. Indoctrination is not education and must be stopped. Our tax dollars are to teach students reading, writing, math and prepare them to go out into the world when they graduate to make a living and be good citizens. Pornography does nothing like that and should never be placed in the minds of young impressionable students.
All great thought and comments. I would just recommend homeschooling. If they don’t have the kids in school too indoctrinate then they won’t be able to share their sick messages with our precious children. I get that homeschooling has its challenges but after being in the homeschooling community for the last seven years we know that we will never put our daughter back into the craziness of public school. I understand the craziness after serving a term in our local district. We can’t change what’s going on in schools, believe me I tried.
Want to end this permanently?
Make t-shirts of this and send your kids to school in them. Do this in every school this book is located. The thing these groomers fear the most is exposure.
You could put blur or black bar over the pornographic part to still keep the moral high ground.
Your welcome
Having these books and discussions in schools is social engineering and not education.
Good for Mary Bellino for publicly making the connection to porn magazines.
Just because pornography is in comic book form doesn’t make it non pornographic.
Tar and Feather these Fascist People and Then BURN their Homes and Businesses down!!!! UNTIL they LEAVE the Area or Stop ACTING LIKE A BUNCH OF NAZI’S?
Main sounds like a good place to never be.
Satan has glamored a lot of people with this ideology.
Its inexplicable and frankly unbelievable….. the people defending it are absolute filth
Thank you for actual journalist level reporting. Almost forgot what it looked like.
Why don’t all the perverts stay out of it with their stupid mouths shut unless a child brings it up and if that happens the first thing you should seek to determine is where the child learned about such behavior! Then find out why and how that information was given to a child!
I wonder how progressives/leftists/Dems would react if children’s books depicting, say, the horrors of abortion–complete with photographs of mutilated aborted babies–were available in their school library. Surely, if children can handle books on sex, strap-on dildoes, etc., then they must have the ability to understand how abortion is something they will face in the future, either for themselves or their friends. What if those same books explained to children how he or she has lost, or will lose, a sibling to an abortion procedure their mother probably had, how evil and wrong it was of their mother to choose abortion instead of birth, how their family would have been larger and more complete if their mother had chosen to let their sibling live? Would they feel as pious to have these books available on the shelves for their children? After all, to quote misguided Cumberland parent Zach Bouchard, it’s important for children to “learn a diverse set of ideas” like abortion and all of its disgusting ramifications.
I thought it was emblematic when the groomer quoted her 10-year-old son as the intellect behind continuing to allow the pornographic books….lol.
That’s the left for you …..they hold a 10-year-old’s logic up as the reason.
You simply can’t wrap your head around how intellectually helpless and deranged these people are
And yet 85-90 percent of so-called “conservatives” and “Christians” will STILL send their precious sons and daughters to be brainwashed in these communist gulags. If you’re putting your kids in these brainwashing centers, you’re not fit to be a parent. “Oh, our principal is a Christian,” “Oh, my kid’s teacher is good,”–Bull Crap. This is a dominating, life-changing system meant to separate your kids from you physically and spiritually. Quit making excuses, cut back on your lifestyle, and raise/teach your own kids. “But you don’t know OUR situation….” blah, blah, blah. It’s your KIDS. Is anything else more important? To most “conservative Christians,” apparently so.
Maine has been lost. If ANY parent or administrator thinks that this is appropriate material, then you are lost. This would never have been allowed in my school when I was a kid. The closest we got was the Encyclopedia Brittanica in the library. And it was very clinical on the discussion of sex. Nothing like this book.
I find it shocking that some people, especially parents support having these books in school libraries. They can be sold or made available elsewhere but like porn magazines and R and X-rated movies, they should have age limits to acquire them.
Vote Republican and homeschool your kids immediately or it will only get worse for you and your kids. Better yet, move away from Maine and let the perverts fend for themselves without your tax dollars and business. I am so glad I don’t live there.
You have two good options:
1) Vote them all out of office with a slate of commonsense candidates
2) SUE their and the town/police’s asses off.
Point:
Let’s say the illustrated figures in the graphic novels were heterosexual teens, boy and girl, rather than same sex teens, depicted as having oral sex and/or vivid sexual narrative, what would the senareo look like, do you suppose? As a thankfully retired public library youth services librarian, I can tell you the books would NEVER make it to the shelves. Marxist ALA and library schools seek only one objective…to train, groom and infiltrate social justice warriors into schools and public libraries. I could see the writing on the wall 40 years ago and, tah dah, the wrecking crews are solidly doing their jobs of ordering, buying, displaying, programming crazy confusion… exactly as planned. Gone is the fair and balanced, wholesome librarian, keeping your children safe from online predators, illicit literature and acoustic patrons. This once healthy, noble and gratifying profession has been destroyed. God help you if you have a different point of view or are a Christian conservative, you get disregarded and disrespected on so many levels. Retirement is so refreshing; for once I’m finally able to practice my First Amendment right.
We will be mowed over by this if we don’t push back forcefully. No more silence. I am sick of being bludgeoned with the “tolerance” stick. Count me as completely intolerant to this, not afraid to say it, and no name you can call me will get me to back down. Yeah, I believe in book banning of children’s pornography. Pornography destroys, and when it is pushed to children, it leads to grooming. Label it every single chance you get: Groomer.
Cannot give up public school to the M&M’s (Marxist & Mao’s). They are trying to use our kids against us. Pray for your family Pray with your family and teach them the full armor of God. THIS is the most effective weapon against the M&M’s .
Someone needs to check out the author. Molested and/or is a molester.
Pedophilia is much like transgender – they both are sexually aroused by their own behavior and displaying it in public.
Even the nudie mag I found in my parents bedroom wasn’t that freaking graphic.
Too Late. The perverts have killed America.
Well this is what happens when a culture turns away from God. Satan is behind communism and of course, pornography. Without the moral fortitude of a Christian, you’re easy prey for Satan. Evidence of Satan? Adults in Maine who can’t tell the difference between male and female, pornography and literature, inclusion and exclusion, diversity and conformity.
These school board members, librarians, administrators are not some mysterious beings who popped out of the void to abuse your children with this grooming pornography funded by your tax dollars.
These people live in your community. They have names, addresses, homes, and family. The are sexually abusing your children! Stop talking to these abusers and plan for them to have an ‘accident.’ It is the only language they will understand.
I would bet EVERY one on the board would vote to ban a Bible in the library!
It’s what all that double-dipping and hiring your friends and your preposterous union gets you: your children turned into prostitutes while you’re turned into medical patients.
I can’t wait until all you nasty mariners are gone and replaced by the beautiful people of ukraine
As a black man, i see nothing but Ol’ Scratch under the skins of these mainahs. Ot heh, i’m sure each and every one of them is an incest practitioner – there’s really only eight or ten types of white people here that all look alike, even their voices all sound the same. Aw, this business of talking about sex in classrooms and getting all worked up is just a waste of time, and everyone is somehow all too dumb to recognize that it is not sex education that these poor devils need, but instead exorcisms.
A million board feet could be cut by each and every one.of those children every day that is otherwise wasted in schools. Personally, I think you’re all fucking idiots
What was so hard about taking the third installment of covid money and then screwing them over by not fo!lowing their agenda. That’s what i would have done. Paulie would’ve done it, no problem, too…awful lot of women teachers, in fact, a lot of women everything in maine. That’s what the real problem is: your women aren’t kept, you’re allowing them to run amok, as if secretly you desire for them to destroy everything. Hear me, Men! Control of a woman is the same as the contro! of a boar, easily attained by inserting a hot brass ring through the septum of the nose, a method which if done immediately following sexual relations will always ensure conception.
I give pistols and ammo to any child who tells me adults force sex on them
I give weapons and ammo to any child who tells me adults force sex on them