In regard to an article by Eric Welsh in the Aug. 26 Chilliwack Progress, “Book debate escalates as trustees encourage police reports.”
No trustee, teacher, administrator or librarian should have the freedom to place books in our district school libraries that contain depictions of sex acts including child-on-child anal sex, child fellatio, and masturbation. Willow Reichelt has no right as a trustee to promote any sexual practices whatsoever in the school district, even if they are practised by the LGBTQ community, and especially she considers these sex acts “diverse representation” and “part of human experience” (as she stated in the article).
Reichelt has even insulted a concerned parent who sent actual images of sex acts shown in some of these books, calling him a “ridiculous human being” in a district email.
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So, when is it appropriate for adults not related to a child to suggest/promote/recommend which sexual practices are normal, healthy and morally acceptable? The answer is never, according to Canadian law.
There are strict definitions as to what is considered child pornography, according to the Department of Justice. “Child pornography is broadly defined and includes:
“any representation of a person who is, or is depicted as being, under the age of 18 years, engaged in explicit sexual activity;
“any representation whose dominant characteristic is the depiction of the sexual organs or anal region of a person under the age of 18 years for a sexual purpose;
“written, visual and audio material that advocates or counsels unlawful sexual activity with a person under the age of 18;
“written, visual and audio material whose dominant characteristic is the description of unlawful sexual activity with a person under the age of 18 for a sexual purpose.”
And further, according to the Criminal Code, “It is against the law for child pornography to be: made, distributed, made, available, sold, possessed or accessed, advertised, exported or imported.
And to make it absolutely clear, for those like Reichelt who are promoting books in the district with explicit sexual content, “The current law criminalizes possession of purely fictional material and has been applied in the absence of any images of real children, including to possession of fictional stories with no pictures at all, or vice versa, cartoon pictures without any stories.
“Prohibition covers the visual representations of child sexual abuse and other sexual activity by persons (real or imaginary) under the age of 18 years or the depiction of their sexual organ/anal region for a sexual purpose…
It also includes the written depictions of persons or characters (fictional or non-fictional) under the age of 18 engaging in sexual activity.”
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If re-elected, I would seek to remove books like “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “The Hate you Give” from school libraries. This is not a matter of “banning books,” as Reichelt says, because they never should have been there in the first place. This is simply a matter of selecting appropriate materials for all cultural and age groups. They add nothing to the aims of our district to foster social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual well being of students. In reality they undermine the purpose of education, turning our instruction into the sexualization of children.
This current philosophical trend of sexualizing children is outright abuse, psychological, sexual, and moral. I stand firm on the belief that the teaching of sexual relations belongs at home and it should never be the prerogative of a teacher or trustee like Reichelt to decide what is sexually normal and acceptable for children to see. As a trustee, I will defend the rights of parents to decide what values and sexual practices they want to teach their children. And I will take any legal action necessary to protect our students.
Darrell Furgason
(Editor’s note: Mr. Furgason is an incumbent candidate in the Oct. 15 school board election. This letters has been printed to allow him to respond to a news story in which he was mentioned. Moving forward, no more letters will be printed from candidates until after the election.)
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