(The Lion) — An Oklahoma school district has voted to keep a sexually explicit book in its library despite parents’ objections.
Edmond Public Schools’ (EPS) board voted unanimously Monday to keep The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls available for high school students.
Published in 2005, the book is a memoir of the author’s nomadic upbringing by neglectful parents.
It depicts alcoholism, prostitution, violence, and the sexual abuse of children by both strangers and relatives. The book also features vulgar language, including multiple F-bombs and the use of words such as “f*ggot” and n-word.
One EPS board member defended the books, saying it was a “biography” and wasn’t “glorifying” being a child predator.
However, district parents disagreed.
“It’s really not for our son that we’re here,” one objector, Brent Larsen, told local media. “It’s for other parents that don’t have the time to go through these books. There’s dozens of these books.”
He chose not to read any of The Glass Castle’s questionable passages out loud due to its vulgarity.
“I can’t even read the content of these books because of your viewers,” Larsen explained. “You’d probably get fined for this content.”
The controversy at EPS started when Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters instituted new rules regarding what books were acceptable in school libraries.
The rule states the state school board will “protect minor students from accessing Pornographic materials and Sexualized content.”
Sexualized content is defined as “material that is not strictly Pornographic but otherwise contains excessive sexual material in light of the educational value of the material and in light of the youngest age of students with access to said material.”
In February 2024, Walters said it was “unbelievable” EPS continued to make The Glass Castle and other explicit books accessible to students.
“Edmond Public Schools is fighting to keep pornography on their shelves,” Walters said in a video posted to X. “Even the liberal media will not even read the lines from the books in Edmond Public Schools on air. It’s that bad. It’s that sexually explicit.”
The battle between Walters and EPS went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court last summer.
Although the court ruled Walters couldn’t force EPS to remove the books, it also didn’t undermine his authority to make rules against such content.
“Although we are disappointed the Court issued this decision, it was made on very narrow grounds,” Walters said at the time. “The Court did not sign on to any of the claims made by the districts that would have affected the State Board of Education’s broad authority over school districts or the Governor’s ability to approve our administrative rules.”
Sexual content in library books has been a huge issue for public schools. Some states have taken steps to remove inappropriate materials while some have made them harder to remove, despite the protests of parents.
