A Texas woman and staunch anti-masker is back in the news for bringing up anal sex at a school board meeting prompting the board to shut off her mic during public comment.
Kara Q. Bell previously ran for school board earlier this year. She has been known to spout QAnon rhetoric on Twitter.
She claims she is not a QAnon believer but has said Bill Gates "makes commercials promoting cannibal satanic worshippers and wants to track every move of #WeThePeople with Contact Tracing."
This time, she's taking a break from anti-vaccine and anti-mask rants and instead going off about a book in the Hudson Bend Middle School library.
The book is called Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez.
Bell focused on the term "corn hole" in her rant:
"All right, not gonna lie, I had to Google 'corn hole' because I have the game in the back of my yard, but according to Wikipedia, corn hole is a sexual slang vulgarism for anus."
"The term came into use in the 1910s in the United States. It's verb form 'to corn hole,' which came into use in the 1930s, means to have anal sex."
"I do not want my children to learn about anal sex in middle school."
"I've never had anal sex, I don't wanna have anal sex, I don't want my kids having anal sex."
"I want you to start focusing on education and not public health."
At this point her mic was cut off.
But she continued to speak to the board through their interruptions:
"You are not public health officials, you are supposed to be educating our children."
"Do not teach them about anal sex."
The video has been posted to Reddit on the PublicFreakout subReddit.
from PublicFreakout
The Lake Travis Independent School District has already pulled the book from two middle schools in that district.
In a statement they said:
"Lake Travis ISD received a call (unidentified) that there was material of a pornographic nature in our Hudson Bend Middle School library."
The spokesperson said:
"A district possesses significant discretion to determine the content of its school libraries,."
"A district must, however, exercise its discretion in a manner consistent with the First Amendment."
He added:
"A district shall not remove materials from a library for the purpose of denying students access to ideas with which the district disagrees."
"A district may remove materials, because they are pervasively vulgar or based solely upon the educational suitability of the books in question."
The comments from Reddit were mostly annoyed by Bell's focus on the book, stating it was essentially a non-issue.
A former Texas student commented:
"Texas is still mostly a conservative state and these people really think that teaching us sex Ed will make us more prone to dabble into it."
"Source: former public school student in Texas."
Since the 1960s, Texas activists have been pushing for textbooks that shed a particular "patriotic" perspective on the country's history.
According to The Washington Post, a group of "White, God-fearing, conservative Texans" have changed the student's textbook landscape from "postwar liberal consensus to a right-wing, colorblind, heteronormative, nationalist retelling of the American story."
Redditor SavimusMaximus said:
"Nobody knew the book existed. Now there's probably a wait list for it in the school library. Nice going."
Redditor GarionOrb commented:
"As if the kids are learning about anal sex from an obscure library book..."
masterbatin_animals replied:
"Totally not the iPad you handed your kid from the ripe age of 3 years old, its definitely the Democrat schools or whatever."
One Redditor, BlueHero45, actually looked up the part Bell quoted:
"Looking up the book it seems the characters she is quoting are 'the gang,' a 'group of white students who are racist sexual predators'."
"So you know...not the good guys of the story."
Someone else wondered why so many school board meetings have people ranting about nonsense these days.
"Are school board meetings the go to place for random ranting these days?"
"Does this happen anywhere else besides America?"
Redditor iamdenislara replied:
"I believe USA is the only country where school districts can decide what to teach."
"Most countries have a unified department of education so there is a set standard of education nation wide."
Bell chose to speak on the books very brief mention of anal sex, but the book is really about segregation, racism and classism in East Texas after a horrific 1937 explosion that killed nearly 300 students.
The bookOut of Darkness focuses in on a love story between an African American boy and a Mexican American girl.
Jonathan Friedman with Pen America, a nonprofit organization that defends diversity, inclusion and free expression in literature said arguments over books such as this one are the tipping point for many heated debates around school literature.
Friedman said:
"Central Texas is one among many areas in the country that have become hotspots for these eruptions of local anger and disagreement."
"I think to pretend books that deal explicitly with sex or sexual assault are in some way a threat to young people are doing them a disservice."
"This is about having access for young people to a wide variety of literature that people from different backgrounds are reflected in."
He added:
"You have a small contingent in many cases of parents who decide that they disagree, and that they must know better than those who are in the classroom."
It's unclear how long the review of this book will take but given the history of banned books in Texas, this one might make the list.
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