School Libraries, Parental Rights, and the Fight for the Second Amendment

On April 4, 2025, guest host Brad Beck fills in for Kim Monson to tackle two battleground issues: a Colorado school district’s legal fight to remove sexually explicit books from its libraries, and the escalating assault on Second Amendment rights in the state legislature, featuring Travis Morrell and Lior Sapir on youth gender care, Dan Snowberger and Jeff Maher from Elizabeth School District, and firearms advocate Alicia Garcia. Safeguarding Children from Gender-Affirming Treatment Start listening at 18:12 – Hour 1 Travis Morrell of the Colorado Parents Advocacy Network previews the second Rocky Mountain Summit on Safeguarding Children from Gender-Affirming Treatment, scheduled for Sunday, April 6 in Denver. Morrell highlights the event’s lineup of experts, including child psychiatrist Miriam Grossman, Denver pediatrician Michelle Stanford, and whistleblower Jamie Reed, all converging to address what he describes as an unprecedented push of unproven medical interventions on minors. Lior Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy and Research, explains that so-called gender-affirming care, involving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for adolescents, originated roughly 15 years ago in the United States through medical association committees whose recommendations outpaced the available scientific evidence. Sapir warns that schools across the nation have adopted social gender transition policies that bypass parental knowledge and consent, a practice now being abandoned by countries like the United Kingdom following the 400-page Cass Review. “Schools, not just public but private as well across the nation, have adopted policies, practices, procedures that not only perform social gender transition on children on demand, but very often keep that information from parents unless the child gives express permission.” Lior Sapir, Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy and Research A School District’s Fight Against Explicit Library Content Start listening at 29:00 – Hour 1 Dan Snowberger, superintendent of the Elizabeth School District, details the district’s 18-month process of reviewing library collections and empowering parents to opt their children out of books containing sensitive content. After a community review of 19 flagged titles revealed overwhelmingly adult material, the school board voted to remove them. The ACLU filed suit on behalf of two families in December, and the district now faces a federal court battle over a preliminary injunction ordering the books returned to shelves. Snowberger reveals a striking irony: the district’s own internet filter, mandated by the federal Child Internet Protection Act, blocked the book excerpts from being emailed through the school system, yet the ACLU insists those same passages belong on library shelves accessible to children. The district, which already lags state averages in reading proficiency at 45 percent, finds itself diverting scarce resources to defend parental rights rather than improving literacy outcomes. “The federal government says we must protect children from receiving content like this over the internet, but we’re being sued to put this content on our library shelves.” Dan Snowberger, Superintendent, Elizabeth School District Jeff Maher, the district’s public information officer and a former television news anchor, describes a media environment that frames the story as a book ban while refusing to publish the actual cont...