- Under federal guidelines, TV and radio stations cannot air obscene content, some which parental rights in education advocates say are in school curriculums.
- “When my kids were younger or just in my earlier life, I can’t think of a time that I would be talking about a children’s book, and I couldn’t discuss it on the radio. This is a new phenomenon where you cannot discuss what is in a book used for children,” Erika Sanzi, Parents Defending Education director of outreach, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- Parental rights in education advocates have been told to avoid talking about different types of sex and images which appear in several school districts’ sexual education curriculums.
Parents and parental rights advocates seeking to shed light on what is being taught in schools say television stations won’t even broadcast what’s in their school curriculums because it’s too obscene.
It is against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines to describe sexual conduct or feature any “grossly offensive” language on a radio or television broadcast. Parental rights in education advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation that television and radio stations do not allow them to talk about the obscene curriculums and books allowed in schools.
“When my kids were younger or just in my earlier life, I can’t think of a time that I would be talking about a children’s book, and I couldn’t discuss it on the radio,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education, told the DCNF. “This is a new phenomenon where you cannot discuss what is in a book used for children.”
Sanzi told the DCNF that a producer at a television station told her she could not discuss the different types of sex that 10-year-olds learn in the “Human Growth and Development” curriculum of a Wisconsin school district due to FCC regulations.
“There was anal sex, oral sex and vaginal sex,” Sanzi told the DCNF. “She was like, ‘oh, my God, like you can’t say that.’ The main thing that she was telling me was that I couldn’t use explicit terms for body parts and I couldn’t describe these different types of sex that that the kids learn about.”
Sanzi said other television stations and radio stations have made similar requests, citing FCC guidelines.
Schools around the country often feature sexually explicit content in their curriculums; the New Jersey Department of Education’s sexual education standards teaches fifth graders all the ways “pregnancy can be achieved” and introduces eighth graders to all the types of sex, including anal sex.
Some school districts feature books such as “Gender Queer,” which depicts illustrations of the main characters masturbating and receiving oral sex, and “This Book Is Gay,” which teaches “boy-on-boy sex” and is described as an instruction manual for LGBTQ students. (RELATED: ‘What Does Semen Taste Like?’: California School Uses Planned Parenthood Lesson To Teach Sexual Health)
Scarlett Johnson, head of Ozaukee, Wisconsin’s Moms For Liberty chapter, was told by a cameraman for WISN 12 News that the station could not air footage of her signs featuring images and language used in a Wauwatosa School District’s sexual education curriculum because it was too obscene, she told the DCNF.
“He said ‘I am going to have to blur the images so much that no one will be able to tell what they’re looking at.’ The language on there, there was anal sex, there was erection, wet dreams,” Johnson told the DCNF. “There were the graphic images of the condoms and then the images of the vulva, vagina, penis. And they all came straight from the curriculum.”
Dr. Vickie L. Cartwright, Superintendent of Broward County Public Schools, helps children find books to be given out for summer reading at Riverside Elementary school as the school district observes A Day of Service and Love in commemoration of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2022 in Coral Springs, Florida. Four years ago on February 14, fourteen students and three staff members were killed during a mass shooting at the school located in Parkland, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Johnson said to that because she cannot talk about the graphic images and material in schools, she is forced to talk about different aspects of sexual education curriculums that do not give the entire picture.
“Because of that, we never talked about the real issues. I’m just getting upset about it and upset that it’s always ‘oh, you just don’t want to read some some kindergarten book about gay parents or princess boys,” Johnson told the DCNF. “It’s so much more than that.”
Under FCC guidelines, obscene content is always prohibited, while indecent and profane content is not allowed to be aired between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. when “there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience.” Sanzi said she understands parents who raise concerns that the content not appropriate for public broadcast is in school curriculums.
“I certainly can understand why a parent would say if you can’t say it on the radio, and you can’t say it on TV and you can’t read it in a public board meeting, perhaps it’s not appropriate for our eight-year-olds,” Sanzi told the DCNF.
The FCC, New Jersey Department of Education, Hillsborough School District, Wauwatosa School District and WISN 12 did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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