Pornography in the Public Schools?: Parents are waking up to the fact that the public schools are exposing their children to pornographic material. How could this be happening and what can we do about it? Ken Ivory is on today to talk to us about legislation that is being put in place to combat this sexualizing of our children by the public schools.

Air Date: 07/20/2023

Guest: Ken Ivory

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

Book Looks

Rated Books

Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders we are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You can learn more at our website WallBuilders.com . Of course, that name WallBuilders comes from the scripture of Nehemiah rise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. What an opportunity to be a part of that, you rebuilding the wall right there where you live by getting involved with WallBuilders starting to get educated, inspired, equipped, and then doing the same for your friends and family, you can host one of our Constitution classes, maybe Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, or Constitution Alive, great opportunity to bring people together, check it out, today at WallBuilders.com . And then also be sure to share the program with as many friends and family as you can, every time they listen to this show, they’re going to get encouraged, they’re going to learn about some of the evils that are going on, because we’re always going to do the good, the bad, and the ugly, talk about the bad stuff as well. But then always talk about the biblical response. And how we can solve these things, which is part of what we’ll be doing today dealing specifically with what’s going on in our schools across the country, and this trash that they’re allowing to be taught to our kids. And the fact that parents when they stand up can get this stuff removed. So anyway, there’s a lot you can do, but be sure to check it out today at WallBuilders.com and look for ways to get plugged in. When we come back from the break, we’ve got Ken ivory back with us, a state rep there in Utah, good friend of the program, and just WallBuilders in general, as he’s spoken at our legislators conference many times. I really enjoyed working with him on the Convention of States simulation back in 2017. And just does a lot of great work. So we’re excited to have Ken back with us. We’re going to be talking about what he just got passed in Utah, with regard to the schools and this just sick stuff that they’re putting into the schools, and how we’re waking folks up and what you can do about it in your community. So you don’t want to miss it. Stay with us. We’ll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us, got a good friend, Ken Ivory, state representative out in Utah and just a great constitution guy, most of you listening that have been through Biblical Citizenship, you’ve heard his incredible comments there in the course as well. But Ken, always good to have you, man. Thanks for a little time today.

Ken Ivory
Rick, love you, brother. It’s always a good day when I can spent some time with you.

Rick Green
Right back at you man. I tell you, you guys, people don’t… they don’t realize in the quote unquote, red states, we’re fighting this cultural Marxism and this attack on our children just as much, well, maybe not just as much, but awfully close to the blue states. There’s no school districts untouched and the things they’re putting into the schools, parents are finally figuring it out. And some of them are waking up. But man, this is crazy what we’re allowed to be taught in our schools. And you’ve discovered some pretty horrific stuff going on right there in Utah.

Ken Ivory
You know, it really is unspeakable, Rick. I had some parents come to me before the 2021 session, and they said, wey, we’ve got this stuff in our children’s school. And they described things, Rick that I just flat couldn’t believe. I’m like, There’s no way. There’s no way that is in a public school. And they said, we got to get together, you got to see this. And sure enough, we sat down and they walked me through the materials. And not only was it in their children’s schools, it’s in schools all throughout the state of Utah and schools throughout the United States while we were asleep during COVID thinking that you know, we make this deal that you’re going to teach our children better than we can and you’re not going to expose them to indecent stuff. And that was just a given. Well, now they’ve… there’s stuff that slipped in that is so obscene and so indecent, Rick, I can’t show it at a legislative meeting of adults. I can’t show it at the school board meeting. And you can’t… certainly can’t put it on TV. We couldn’t describe blow by blow on your program, what this stuff is, it’s so obscene.

Rick Green
How did… well, As a legislator, how does the legislature respond to this? I mean, when you show this to other legislators, and you say, we got to do something about this, what are they… are they willing to join you? Or are they just they don’t want to deal with it, they want to pretend it’s not happening? What are you hearing and seeing?

Ken Ivory
Ah, that’s a great question, you know, originally, so we did this in 2022 session. And at that time, nobody believed that there… you know, that it could be this bad, just like my reaction. And so what I had to do, Rick, I put the flier of the kinds of materials representative of the kinds of materials in schools in a brown paper bag, and I put a warning label on it, and set it on all the legislative desks and basically said, open at your peril. And so, you know, we sent it out with a warning label, because otherwise I have been warned that I could be liable for distributing pornography by sending stuff out, but it’s okay for the kids…

Rick Green
Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, yeah. Where are the librarians and the principals and the administrators, you know, in their…

Ken Ivory
It’s absurd. It’s absolutely absurd. And so, so anyway we did that, we put it out that way. And they were still, most of the legislators were still very incredulous that this could be in the schools. And then during the session, and after the session, as education establishment people just kept fighting, vehemently fighting, that, you know, this is banning books and burning books. And this is like being a Nazi, and you’re going to be on the wrong side of history. And we’d have to remind them, and usually just by asking the question, do you believe there should be age appropriate limits to what children are exposed to in kindergarten through 12th grade? Do you think there should be any limit on what they’re exposed to? And, you know, any person of good faith would have to say yes. And then we say, well, that’s all we’re talking about. And then Rick, the really… the thing that we get them on is, we didn’t create the legal standard for this bill, we adopted the legal standard that the teachers and the education administrators had enacted in law, they requested it to be enacted in law, to deal with the obscene and indecent materials that students brought to school, or accessed at school on their devices. We took that same legal standard and said, If it’s good enough for, you know, the limits you put on what students bring to school, it should be the same standard for what you provide to the students, and what they you know, what they get at school. And so we took that same standard, and, of course, that’s lost on most of them. But that’s what this is, we took that very same standard and said, let’s apply that to the materials that happened at the schools. And, you know, then, of course, the question became… you know, we got the bill passed, and now implementation has been like pulling teeth. We’ve got districts that, you know, they’ll say, well, Federal law says… and Rick, there’s no federal law on this, as you know, education, even FDR, right? Even FDR, in the 150th anniversary of the Constitution, they said, hey, where’s there education in the Constitution? He says, there is none. Education is reserved to the States. And we’ve got people running around…

Rick Green
I didn’t know FDR said that! Oh, my goodness. That’s great. Where did you find that!?

Ken Ivory
Here’s the reference. It’s called The Story of the Constitution. 150th anniversary, the Story of the Constitution. FDR was the chairman of the book and the book was by Sol Bloom, and 150th anniversary of the The Constitution. There’s a catechism in the back. And it has that: Where is there mention of education in the Constitution? There is none, education’s reserved to the States.

Rick Green
Love it. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. Because guys like you and me say that all the time. But when you can say even FDR understood this. That’s powerful. Okay, sorry, I got… I derailed you a little bit there. Okay, so yeah, exactly. There’s no… They want to claim we’re, you know, federal whatever. The feds involvement in education is unconstitutional top to bottom.

Ken Ivory
Well, here let me tell you federal law and it’s important that people know this because the ACLU attorneys and others that run around telling people this is federal law. And you know, most people don’t know. So they listen to attorneys that sound like they know what they’re talking about. Here’s what federal law is, Rick. About 25-30 years ago, there was a case and it was Pico versus Island Trees school district. So it’s called the Pico case. And in the Pico case, Supreme Court case, there was a case of… on summary judgment, it was granted on summary judgment at the appellate court level for political materials. Some schools had removed some materials for political reasons. Wasn’t indecent, obscene, you know pornographic type stuff. This was a political related stuff and the school district decided to remove it. Appeals Court granted summary judgment. It went up to the Supreme Court, the holding of the case was there were genuine issues of material fact it wasn’t appropriate for summary judgment, that’s the holding of the case. In that case, three out of nine judges… Now Rick, I went to public school, three out of nine, as I understand it, is not a majority. But three of the judges suggested that… First of all, they said, school districts, they can keep material out of schools for any reason or no reason at all. You don’t have unlimited shelf space, you don’t have to put certain materials on the school shelves. But if it happens to get into the school, there’s a First Amendment right to retain the material. three judges made that statement. That is what ACLU and others are saying is federal law. I kid you not.

Wow. Wow… and I’m guessing, you know, most administrators are going to back down because they don’t know. And their…

That’s right, now what’s even crazy. So even in the Pico case, the three judges, the three judges said, oh, if it’s vulgar, if it’s pornographic, if it’s vulgar, well of course, you can take that out. But nobody reads the case.

Rick Green
No kidding. No kidding. Well, okay, so then you mentioned enforcement then. So, you know, how do you get, it’s kind of like a lot of the laws we get, end up getting passed at the state level enforcement at the local level and getting through the bureaucracy of the school district, very difficult. So what do you recommend to folks… Can you recommend to citizens to go to the school board and say, hey, what are you doing to enforce this law that was just passed?

Ken Ivory
Well, 100%, right? 100%, we need parents to go talk to their school board members and just confront them. And so we have parents that are challenging materials. But in the law, originally, I had a private right of action so that if the schools did not remove materials, when parents would challenge them, then the parents could take a private right of action and go to the court and let the court decide and have some penalties do it. And, of course, you know, the schools kind of went crazy about that. And they said, oh, you know, heaven forbid, we’ll have lawsuits all over the place. And we’ll you know, we’ll lose money. And my answer to that would be well, then don’t have pornographic material in schools…

Rick Green
That’s right, it’s simple solution. Yeah, exactly.

Ken Ivory
And if there’s a question, err on the side of, you know, keeping schools safe, rather than sexualized, but, you know, when it was right out of the gates, and you know, how a legislature works, without having knowledge of what was going on, I couldn’t get that through. So we pulled out the private right of action, and we put in a reporting requirement. And they wanted the Attorney General to give them some guidance on what is obscene and indecent. Well, the first attorney general memo could have been rubber stamped by the ACLU. I mean, it was just not good. We got him to change it. But his second memo was still kind of a CYA, maybe this maybe that, and didn’t really give the schools a lot of guidance. And then you’ve got school districts that for whatever reason, I don’t get it, but they are working so hard to keep these materials in the schools rather than erring on the side of decency and virtue and protection. I mean, Rick, we know, there are all kinds of documented studies that if you sexualize an environment, you’re going to have a greater incidence of sexual exploitation and abuse. It’s not a direction connection, but we know there’s a correlation. And there was a young girl at the high school right here in the middle of my district, who was sexually abused in the classroom, at school that has dozens and dozens and dozens of these obscene and indecent materials when they’re sexualizing the environment. I mean, they’re talking about sex, they’re reading about sex, they’re, you know, all of this stuff all day long, instead of, hey, why don’t we focus on reading and writing and history and arithmetic and, you know, things that help children learn how to think. And it is so sexualized, and then their answer to that is, well, they’re going to get it on their phone anyway. Well, to me, that’s no excuse. It’s like, there needs to be an island of virtue and an island of decency somewhere, we don’t give up and go down throw over the cliff.

Rick Green
That’s right, and like you said, the more you, you know, put it out there, the worst is going to get and you said, why… you know, you started to go down this road, I think we should, what is motivating these school administrators and teachers and people that are supposed to be there, for the kids, they’re always claiming that’s what they’re there for, what is motivating them to fight so hard to keep this junk in the schools?

Ken Ivory
You know what I think it is Rick, I think it’s just like, just about anything else, there is a small organized group. So you’ve got like the American Library Association and groups like that. I’ve seen some materials where they actually reward librarians and teachers if they defeat a book challenge. And they’ve got, you know, if you go on the site, go on the American Library Association site, and they have all kinds of information on how to defeat challenges of This obscene and salacious material. So you’ve got small groups like that, that mobilize, of course the ACLU and others like that. And, most of the people are just, you know, they’re doing their job, they want to keep their head down. They don’t want to be involved in controversy. So when you have the irate, tireless minority, for darkness instead of light, and you don’t have the counterbalancing force of those standing for and defending, goodness, truth, justice, virtue, light, then the darkness with a plan and the motivation, they’re going to run roughshod. And that seems to be what’s happening.

Rick Green
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it, man. That’s the reason for, you know, stepping up in our local communities. And like you said, citizens just saying, hey, I’m going to take it upon myself to at least make a phone call or an email, but hey, go show up at the school board meeting and just ask, hey, I just want to know, is any of this going on in our school? And have you looked into it school board? Have you looked to see if any of this pornography is there? And if so, are you removing it and do you know about this new law that was passed, if they’re in Utah. If you’re not in Utah, and you’re listening, right now, you can still do the same thing, you can still… you should still do the same thing. Even if you, you know, homeschool, private school, or whatever other method of education and not the public school, those kids in your local public school are going to be running the businesses and your schools, running the churches, running the government, in you know, 20-30 years, so you need to be paying attention to what they’re being taught. And, Ken, have you heard from other legislators around the country? Are they following suit, passing something like what you did here?

Ken Ivory
You know, yeah, there have been a number of places where they are introducing similar legislation. You know, some in Florida, Ron DeSantis, took it upon himself to act as an executive, which could easily be done, I mean, Rick, there’s enough laws on the books that deal with pornographic material that we really didn’t need a new law, we had to write one just to kind of get very, very prescriptive and tell them, but heaven forbid, you know, for 100 years, we just assumed that teachers and mostly education administrators would know and not expose our children to salacious, I mean… this is not… so people want to say, oh, it’s Catcher in the Rye and it’s How To Kill a Mockingbird, and… no, it’s nothing like that. It’s nothing like that. This is actually illustrated. Many of these things are illustrated… So for example, the Davis School District, and I’m sure you want to talk about this as well, the Davis school district that had an anonymous committee, reviewed the Bible. So based on this law, there was a parent that just did this flippant, sarcastic challenge to the Davis School District and said, Oh, if you’re going to challenge, obscene and indecent materials, you need to review and remove the most pornographic book in the history of the world, the Bible and…

Rick Green
Oh my goodness.

Ken Ivory
[I’m] serious. That was like that was the challenge and… and then they took it seriously. And they put together a review committee that was anonymous. And then in late may, this anonymous review committee comes out with a determination that the Bible has no serious value for children in elementary and junior high schools.

Rick Green
Unbelievable.

Ken Ivory
Unbelievable, Right? And what’s more… what’s most unbelievable to me, Rick, is that the district, the school district officials, when that determination from the anonymous committee came out, didn’t just go, huh? You better go back and check your math on that one. Because, you know, this is the foundation of our legal system of our judicial system of our Constitution. It’s, you know, art, let’s talk about Handel’s Messiah, and the David and the Sistine Chapel, and science, let’s talk about, you know, Newton, and Kepler and, you know, on and on, Bacon, and then literature. It’s studied as literature in every university, major university around the world, Shakespeare quotes the Bible, almost 2000 times. And so for school district officials to not know any of that well enough that they would say, yeah, you know, it’s probably close enough call. But if an anonymous committee says that, let’s send it out to the world, that really concerns me that we don’t know this well enough anymore. You know, they kick the Bible and prayer and stuff out of schools in the 60s. And now we’re a couple of generations removed, that we don’t know. They don’t know well enough to say, that’s completely ludicrous. We’re not sending that out to the world. Go check your math and come back and try it again. Now, there was enough of an uproar out of all of that, that there was an appeal to the school board, itself, and they overturned the decision. But to this day, Rick, I’ve been asking where… because their own policy, they said they didn’t challenge it under my law, the law that the legislature passed they… So that begs the question, what did they challenge it under? We assume they challenged it under their own policy. Their own policy requires objective criteria on every element of their policy, which is, you know, you have to take the Bible as a whole, you can’t look at a verse here, there. And then you have to look at, with objective criteria, does it have serious literary, artistic, political, scientific value? And then they have to look at, you know, other objective criteria for reliable expert sources and you know, different things like that. They could not show, and I’ve been asking, a single objective criteria for a single element of their own policy, which tells us theyjust winged it, and sent it out to the world.

Rick Green
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. No doubt about it. And like you said, I mean, this is the exact opposite of what we know should be happening in education. We know that, you know, the founders were adamant about teaching the Bible in schools and having it and these these folks are doing the exact opposite, removing it, saying it’s worthless.

Ken Ivory
Now get this. So the very same school district, the Davis School District, that had an anonymous committee, make a determination that the Bible has no serious value, they have on their shelves right now, a book called Assassination Classroom. And Assassination Classroom is kind of a manga cartoon style book that has illustrations of kids shooting teachers and shooting up the classroom. It has an illustration of a young lady that’s barely clad, straddling in a sexual position, a man that’s fully naked, with a gun blowing the smoke away from the barrel of the gun, while she’s doing a sex act, illustrated. That’s in the school for junior high school students in the same district that said, the Bible had no serious value for children.

Rick Green
Wow, man. I mean, that’s just, this explains why the mama bears are up in arms, and absolutely speaking out when they know about it. But how many school districts, you know, are doing this, and the parents still don’t know or aren’t paying attention? I mean, that… you know, they need to wake up. And I know everybody’s busy, everyone’s got things to do, you’re sending your children to the schools, or, you know, again, even to the parents that aren’t doing that, it’s still your community where this is happening. I mean, we’ve got to have a call to action on this.

Ken Ivory
That’s right. And Rick, it is so hard to believe that that kind of material would really be in schools. And so until they see… and so there’s a couple of websites, right, there’s a website called BookLooks.org . That describes these materials BookLooks.org . And then in Utah, we had parents put their own website together, and it’s called RatedBooks.org, RatedBooks.org . And you can go see for yourself, these are the books that are you know, rated…

Rick Green
And now, can they… is there some sort of a log of school districts that have it or don’t have it? Or is that you just go here to know what to look for?

Ken Ivory
Now, I’m not sure on the BookLooks.org , but on the RatedBooks.org, they show where each one of these books are in every school district and which schools throughout the state. You can go in and see, you know, where… so for example, this Assassination Classroom book, that’s in almost every school in Utah, and I’m sure it’s in almost every school around the nation, because, you know, it’s been given awards, and that’s what happens, right? It… they have these clubs, that they give these books awards, and so you get these really salacious books, but they’ll say, well, it’s award winning, so it must be okay. And then what we’ve been asking the question, how did these things get in in the first place? Nobody has a good answer. They can’t really answer that question. But near as we can tell, based on that Pico case that, you know, three out of nine judges said, you can keep it out for any reason or no reason at all. But if it gets in, then they’ve got a right to receive and you can’t get it out. If it’s political, for political reasons, right. Even the three judges said if it’s pornographic, but of course, they ignore all that stuff. So near as we can tell based on that Pico case, that, you know, three judges said, if it gets in the school, they’ve got some right to receive to get it out. And again, even though the three judges said if it’s vulgar, of course, you can take it out and they ignore all that, near as we can tell, they took that and they tried to just launch as many arrows over the wall as they could, so the ACLU and the American Library Association and publishers and others that are kind of trying to get this information in, and so when they have a bundle of books, so they’d have like a third grade bundle of books, and they’d have a bunch of these materials in and then they’d have a, you know, a fifth grade bundle or whatever. And they’re selling these books in his bundles, and, you know, the librarians and whomever I mean, there’s going to be a spectrum of intentions, I believe on the ground, you know, some were just duped and they didn’t realize what they were buying. And others were, you know, maybe trying to get this stuff in. But near as we can tell, that’s how this stuff got in. And then now that it’s in, they’re dragging their feet in a lot of ways getting it out, which is just appalling to me.

Rick Green
Well, it’s good to hear that these tools are out there. I mean, even and I pulled up the website for RatedBooks.org . And, this is the kind of stuff we didn’t used to do very well, right? Like we would rant and rave and maybe even pass a bill, but it’s the ground game. It’s the tools, it’s getting people the tools they need to then go take action. So this is fantastic. Just good stuff, man. I say good stuff, meaning, we know this evil is out there. We’ve seen it marching across the country. It’s actually been out there a long time. They’ve been pouring this junk into our kids for a long time. I think Americans are waking up, you know, they’re waking up, you’re seeing the response there in Utah, and it’s growing across the country. But I just appreciate your leadership in the state of Utah and for our nation. I mean, there’s just a need for it right now. People need to know there are patriots like Ken Ivory out there making a difference. So brother, I appreciate you, man. Keep up the great work. Let’s get you back again soon.

Ken Ivory
Well, Rick, thanks for helping get the word out. This is critical and there is no substitute for Parents and Citizens stepping up and making their voice heard and move forward. So Rick, thanks for getting the word out. And always, like I said, always a good day when I can hang out with my friend, Rick Green.

Rick Green
Hey, appreciate you man. That’s Ken Ivory. Thanks for listening, folks. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.