On September 27, 2021, members of Pray For Our Schools were in the audience to support a member who was presenting to the Board about the Mental Health Crisis caused by FCPS policies and FLE/SEL curricula. Instead, when they arrived, they encountered a hostile School Board and the Speaker changed course appealing to God’s Will since the School Board was closed off to discussion. She invoked the Holy Spirit and concluded with the St. Michael Prayer.
Unbeknownst to Pray For Our Schools, the next speaker revealed pornographic material that she checked out of her son’s Fairfax High School library. The Board was horrified and Chair, Stella Pekarsky, shut off the mother’s microphone admonishing her to stop her expose because children could be watching. The mother responded the material was in their school libraries. Stella Pekarsky defended the books claiming they were only in senior high schools (at least one of the schools mentioned was also in a middle school). Apparently, x-rated material, while not allowed for children without the accompaniment of an adult in movie theatres, is allowed at Fairfax High Schools and paid for by taxpayers.
The Board was in crisis and left en masse (except Karl Frisch, Abrar Omeish, and Laura Jane Cohen) to the back room to discuss next steps. Someone in the audience videotaped the incident and it appears in a report by Investigative Reporter Asra Nomani. Warning, it includes the testimony of the mother with quotes from the book and pictures of the graphic depiction of sexual acts. If anyone is unsure of whether, parents are overreacting as candidates for the General Assembly and School Board have claimed, this should make the case.
If you watch the video, note that the Security Officer who admonished the audience, after dishonestly claiming to the mother at the podium that he was the next speaker, is the same officer who told Pray For Our Schools, they could not hold a sign with an image of Our Lady because it was a “protest sign” while peacefully praying the Rosary outside of the School Board meeting the following October.
During the chaos, the audience spontaneously recited the St. Michael Prayer again while it waited for the meeting to reconvene. At this point, FCPS Board Member Karl Frisch revealed the Board’s agenda by tweeting out: “It’s not every week the School Board receives two exorcisms during public comment. To be clear, nothing will disrupt our Board’s commitment to LGBTQIA+ students, families, and staff. Nothing. “
Following a “review” of the pornographic materials by two committees appointed by FCPS Administration and the School Board, FCPS reinstated the books that sent the scandalized School Board scampering to a back room after shutting off a mother’s microphone for reading and showing images from the books at the School Board meeting on September 23. The committees concluded that the books depicting LGBTQ+ sexual acts “aligns with FCPS Regulation 2603 supporting members of the gender-expansive community and affirming individuals in their identity.” No explanation is given how an adolescent’s “identity” is affirmed by viewing explicit pornographic depictions of sexual acts.
Numerous “rallies” have occurred in the past year to support the inclusion of pornographic material. Participants of the rallies include representatives from FCPS Pride, Pride Liberation Project, 4 Public Education (a front group of Teachers’ Unions), NAACP Fairfax and FCPS librarians. At a Board meeting in September 2023, rally participants wore yellow shirts in solidarity with offensive books.
Proponents of the obscene material misdirect the discussion by creating a strawman (a mass movement to ban thousands of books because of hate) and then claiming the moral high ground of defending the victim. The outrage of parents in Fairfax County is over graphic pornography in school libraries, not Doctor Suess .
Book challenges have always focused on marginalized groups, like people of color and the LGBTQIA community, but this is a slippery slope where these challenges are chipping away at freedoms of all people, whether they be Jewish, Muslim, Black, Hispanic, lower income, and/or women.
Vanessa Hall, Book Bans by any other Name Smell like Censorship
Who is Vanessa Hall? Concerned parent? Pawn of the School Board, FCPS Administration, Teachers Union and/or political party activist? Whoever she is, she is on campaign Unstoppable Stories: A Banned Books Festival.
FCPS Administration and School Board Know Better — But Ideology Interferes
FLE Dedicates an entire class on Pornograpy in 9th Grade – Occasion of Sin?
The FLE curriculum of FCPS claims to recognize the damage inflicted on children by Pornography by dedicating an entire class in 9th grade on it. A review of the lesson plan raises serious concerns about whether FCPS understands the real dangers to children and perhaps explains its defense of pornographic material for 9th graders in the libraries. Parents should review this lesson plan before allowing their child to be exposed to this secular view of pornography. Hint: key to the definition of pornography is consent.
Does any thinking adult need a journal article to know the obvious Truth?
Most Adults Who Review Obscene Material in School Libraries are Horrified
Contrary to what proponents of sexually explicit books and the Fairfax School Board claim, most adults when exposed to these books are horrified. Recently, an article appeared in Slate Magazine, I watched “book bans” happen in real time. I thought they were all hysteria. Then I opened one of the most-challenged titles, by Aymann Ismael. (/WARNING this links to the original article that contains a warning: This article includes explicit images from a sex-education book for teenagers.) Mr. Ismael reports when he asked the librarian for a copy of the book, her response was: “I’ve seen this one before. It’s like, really, really detailed,” she answered with a nervous smile. “Like, very graphic.” Mr. Ismael thought he could handle it:
I felt sure that as a 34-year-old father of two there would be nothing in there that would offend my sensibilities. I’d heard nothing but glowing reviews from sex-ed pros about the child-friendly language in the book. But flipping through the book’s pages finally, I was a little shocked. I had an involuntary reaction to seeing the nude cartoons, like I needed to make sure I was alone and hide the book. I skimmed ahead to look at the rest of the book briskly. On virtually every page I stopped to examine, I was confronted with detailed drawings of genitals. It felt like every page had a cartoon of a naked body.
Aymann Ismael, Slate Magazine
Mr. Ismael maintained his discomfort with the book, but got a good working over by Sex Educator, Melissa Pintor Carnegey who told him:
“I didn’t grow up with a sex-positive upbringing. I’m Puerto Rican, I’m Black, I’m Mexican, I grew up with Catholicism,” she said. “It’s been a big unlearning and relearning, raising my kids in a different way and then seeing the results of that.”
Carnagey advised that confidence is key. “There’s nothing wrong or bad with you as an adult or parent if this feels uncomfortable. You learned that. We can unlearn. It takes time, knowledge, education. And banning books that help us on that path is not the answer,” she said in a comforting tone. “How we model for them our own comfort levels around these topics ultimately helps them to do the same, to feel that confidence, and it’s lifesaving. It truly is.” Carnagey founded Sex Positive Families, a robust online list of books and resources for sex education.
Aymann Ismael, Slate Magazine
Perhaps if Ms. Carnegey had been taught a Catholic understanding of human love and sexuality, she wouldn’t have to unlearn the shame she projects on families who oppose her recommendations for “education”.
Read the buzzwords lifted right out of an SEL lesson in Ismael’s conversation with Carnegey:
Carnagey was, to my surprise, empathetic. “There’s so much more visibility and language nowadays for diverse sexuality and gender identities that our young people are very much aware of, and that can feel intimidating to adults today who didn’t grow up with that kind of language or that level of openness around identities,” she said. “That’s understandable. I just have yet to consistently see what many of these opponents’ alternatives are. If it’s silence, if it’s avoidance, shame, I absolutely do not feel that that is in the best interest of young people or of our society as a whole.”
“Those are our triggers. We weren’t born with them. They were taught to us. It says nothing about our child and their experience getting to know their body,” she said.
“I had a very clear why in my approach to parenting. I wanted my daughter to know her body. I wanted her to feel that she had agency and autonomy and a sense of ownership around her own body. I didn’t want her to feel shame. I wanted her to understand her rights to pleasure, certainly before she desired to welcome anyone else to engage with her body.”
Aymann Ismael, Slate Magazine
No, Ms. Carnegey, we were born with “innocence”, we weren’t “taught” it. Shame is the response to sin. Ms. Carnegey’s soothing manipulation is reminiscent of the conversation between Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden as the serpent reassured (in an empathic voice) “God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.” To which Saint Pope John Paul II responds: “Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. “
Children have more questions because sex educators like Carnegey are exposing them to “so much more visibility and language nowadays for diverse sexuality and gender identities”. Children are not enriched by this exposure. Anxiety and depression among the young who have been exposed to this disordered view of sexuality are at crisis levels. Carnegey and her fellow travelers have a disordered view of sexuality (disordered because it does not follow God’s order) and they are imposing it on children whom they want to recreate in their own image and likeness.
In the Catholic Church’s Safe Environment Class (required of all adult staff and volunteers who have contact with children), VIRTUS, pedophiles explain clearly how they groom a child to victimize:
- Find a vulnerable child (innocent)
- Befriend the child showing empathy and separate the child from his parents or other authority
- Desensitize the child with sexually explicit material
- Take advantage of the child who has become a willing participant.
But even with the steps that the pedophile or Carnegey herself recommends, the child is not immune to the consequences of sin and victimization. Shame, depression and anxiety will follow that child regardless of the pedophile’s or “sex educator’s” false promises of “body autonomy” and “rights to pleasure”. It is only by following God’s Plan for sexuality that we can find Peace.
parentsoutofexile 
