(Fox News) A Florida school board cut off a dad’s microphone, saying that the content he was reading was “pornography” as he tried to expose the materials he said were in schools.
The Clay County School District dad, Bruce Friedman, told Fox News Digital, “These books are so vile that reading any excerpt that I captured will end this interview.”
“Somebody failed drastically in their mission to protect children,” said Friedman, the president of Florida’s No Left Turn in Education, a group focused on exposing indoctrination in U.S. public schools. “As soon as I announced that I was going to read from some books that parents… found in the public school libraries that are clearly pornographic, [they] had the mic cut off.”
At a June 30 school board meeting, Friedman began to read from one of the books.
“I’m going to read things; if there’s children watching, cover their ears,” he said at the meeting.
One of the books the dad raised at the school board meeting was “Lucky” by Alice Sebold, which entails a story of a college girl who was raped and included details of the attack. The Destiny Discover online library software in Fleming Island High School and Orange Park High School in Clay County included the title “Lucky.”
“I’m going to stop you right there, sir,” Friedman was told. “Turn off his microphone, please.”
“Why?” Friedman asked.
“The problem is, sir, that these meetings are broadcast, there are people at home that are watching it on YouTube. There are people that are watching it on community television. Are you going to listen? Or are you going to run your mouth?”
The dad was told by the school board that he would not be allowed to read “pornography” on the broadcast, as it violated the law.
“There are federal and state laws that prohibit you from saying the things that you’re getting out to say on television. There are state laws that prohibit in federal communications laws that prohibit you from publishing these things to a child. You don’t have the ability at this point to determine who’s watching the television show. And for you to say, ‘everybody cover your ears’ just doesn’t cut it,” the dad was told.
Friedman then protested, stating he would want the floor back.
“You’ll get it back, but you’ll get it back to talk about something besides reading pornography into a public television set,” the dad was told.
Fox News Digital reached out to the school board but did not immediately receive a response.
At one point, Friedman went up to one of the school board members to put the triboard poster he created right in front of him.
Friedman became an advocate to protect children in schools from curricula he deems to be “poison” because he “has skin in the game.” He wants his 15-year-old son to be in the public school system and come home unharmed.
The dad had previously placed his now 15-year-old son in a New York public school for kindergarten and first grade, which caused “considerable harm” to him.
“In my experience, people don’t get off the couch until it’s on fire. People don’t work to protect their children until they’re harmed. In my case, the same applies. I sent my son to New York… public school for kindergarten and first grade – they did considerable harm to my boy,” he said. “That is why I’m here – I never shook it off. I never stopped fighting. We got him into a private school promptly after first grade, but the damage was done. It took five years, in my opinion, to put him back on the right track.”
The dad describes his son as “bright,” “gifted,” and “a fine young man who is considerably smarter than I am.”
“He makes me proud, but I am not going to stick him in a school with groomers and pedophiles and twisted sick people that think these… books and many like them are okay to present to a child. They are not okay. There’s no literal literary value to any of this. It’s poison.”
Friedman also weighed into the current debate on Drag Queen Story Hour performers.
“People are arguing about things like drag queen story hour, whether or not is it appropriate for children to learn that other kinds of persons and lifestyles exist,” he said.
“I saw this recently, so I’m going to repeat it. We shouldn’t be asking whether or not it’s okay for our children to sit in on a drag queen story hour, we should be asking why the drag queens want an audience of children.”
