Moms for Liberty goes to war with New York school over five library books

Moms for Liberty, an ultra-conservative parental rights outfit the Southern Poverty Law Center considers an extremist organization, is fighting to immediately remove five “obscene” library books from an Upstate New York public school, insisting they are simply too dangerous to keep on the shelves.

The body of work being challenged supposedly “normalizes violence and abuse of women and children, depicts rape, equates violence and pain with pleasure, [and] encourages and normalizes early sexual activity among minors,” according to a petition filed this week in Wayne County Supreme Court by Moms for Liberty and an area evangelical pastor.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is set to appear Friday evening at an event hosted by the group.

In their petition, the ardent culture warriors claim the books expose kids to “obscene depictions of sexually explicit acts.” The books in question include People Kill People, a YA novel by bestselling author Ellen Hopkins about the deleterious effects of gun violence; It Ends With Us, a romance novel by Colleen Hoover that was made into a Hollywood film starring Blake Lively; All Boys Aren’t Blue, a “memoir-manifesto” by journalist and LGBTQ activist George M. Johnson about his struggles growing up as a gay Black man; Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold, a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood centered on female empowerment; and Julia Scheeres’ Jesus Land: A Memoir, a New York Times bestseller about the author’s unpleasant childhood experience at a fundamentalist church camp.

Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the New York State Education Department, told The Independent that leadership “stands 100 percent behind” state education commissioner Betty Rosa for keeping the five books on the