OAN’s Abril Elfi
3:25 PM – Wednesday, December 20, 2023
A school board member in Virginia was sworn in for his second term on the school board on a stack of banned LGBTQ+ books.
Karl Frisch was sworn into the Fairfax county School Board for his second term and swapped the bible for a stack of LGBTQ+ books that have been banned in surrounding schools for “sexually controversial content.”
“He was sworn in on a stack of the five LGBTQ-themed books most frequently banned by other school systems,” Frisch’s campaign website announced. “Currently, the Board’s Vice Chair, Frisch becomes its Chair on January 1. He is the first LGBTQ+ person elected to local office in Virginia’s largest county and one of only four openly LGBTQ+ school board members in the Commonwealth out of roughly 800 members.”
Frisch was sworn in by his male partner who was holding the stack of books which included, All Boys Aren’t Blue, Gender Queer, Flamer, Lawn Boy and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Several books, including Flamer and Gender Queer, have contentious sexual imagery or other elements that have led to other school districts banning them.
Flamer was penned by the distinguished writer and artist Mike Curato. Curato’s work, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel set in 1995, was published in 2020. The protagonist of the tale is teased at a Boy Scout summer camp for “acting in a manner considered stereotypical of gay men.”
Characters in the graphic novel talk about erections, masturbation, penis size, and pornography. There’s also an illustration of teenage boys in their underwear.
Similar to this, Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer has drawn a lot of criticism from parents in America for being kept in public school libraries across the country and for discussing and depicting oral sex as well as masturbating.
Frisch’s ceremony comes after the newly elected president of the Pennsylvania school board took office with her hand over a stack of divisive novels in early December.
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