by Donald W. Bohlken
Conservatives in the Indianola Independent School District need to vote in the school board election on Tuesday, November 7th. Both Rob Keller (pictured above, left) and Patty Alexander (pictured above, right) are school board candidates who realize that sexually explicit materials are not appropriate for school libraries. Please vote for them.
Please do not vote for Aaron Labertew and Eric Christensen, who are opposed to SF496, the new legislation that bars books from school libraries, such as “Gender Queer,” “Push,” and “A Court of Silver Flames,” which have explicit descriptions or visual depictions of sex acts. Labertew is also opposed to school vouchers.
Adding fuel to the fire is an Indianola Independent Advocate article detailing how teachers in Indianola were “scrambling” to remove many innocuous books, such as “Of Mice and Men” and “To Kill A Mockingbird,” from school libraries based on the false proposition that SF496 bans any books even mentioning sex.
Patty Alexander, in particular, has been subjected to a vicious smear campaign because she has spoken out against pornography in school libraries and is a member of Moms for Liberty. Patty is a former school teacher with a good heart who cares about kids. She will make an excellent and dedicated school board member.
This smear campaign portrays her and Moms for Liberty as “extremists,” book banners, and even opposed to teachers and public education. One person’s published comments on two letters to the editor in the Indianola Independent Advocate compared parents who want to keep explicit sexual material out of school libraries to Nazis oppressing Jews. This is part of the hatred dividing our country. Nothing could be further than the truth.
This smear campaign has even included telephone calls to voters urging them to not vote for Patty Alexander.
Patty is “for restoring respect for educators and the profession.”
Patty supported legislation that protects teachers and kids from violence and protects children from pornography. Yet, her opposition to providing pornography to children, something not protected by the First Amendment, has been criticized as “book banning.”
In Newsweek, ”Are a Majority of Moms Hateful Extremists?’ examined Moms for Liberty. On issue after issue, M4L was in line with the majority of Americans. M4L wanted to end school COVID closures. By Spring 2021, 79% of Americans agreed. M4L opposed school mask mandates. In the end, 46% of parents believed masking harmed their children while 11% believed it helped. A majority of Blacks and other Americans agreed with M4L that critical race theory should not be taught in schools. M4L opposed gender identity and sexual orientation being taught to elementary school students, a position agreed to by 70%. And, Surprise!, 70% oppose books in school libraries with explicit descriptions of sex.
In addition to the polls cited in Newsweek, Moms for Liberty’s position supporting school vouchers is mainstream as shown by a Morning Consult poll reporting 66% of adults also support school vouchers.
As Governor Reynolds has pointed out, when we show up, we win elections!
Votes for Rob Keller and Patty Alexander are votes for tolerance, respect, fairness to all and quality education. They are votes against cancel culture hatred. Vote!
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Donald W. Bohlken of Indianola is an attorney and a retired administrative law judge with the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. He worked for seven years combined at the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and Cedar Rapids Human Rights Commission as an investigator and then for 21 years as an administrative law judge at the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and the Department of Inspections and Appeals. He received his Juris Doctor with Honors from Drake Law School in 1986.
Photo “Rob Keller” by Rob Keller. Photo “Patty Alexander” by Patty Alexander.
