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Ashley Gilhousen: Florida school board member disgusted by 'porn' in library books, wants 'disciplinary action'

'There needs to be disciplinary action for anybody who offers this kind of material to a child,' Ashley Gilhousen said in an interview

A Florida school board member has spoken out against "pornographic books" available to kids as she called for them to be removed before the start of the 2022-2023 school year.

Ashley Gilhousen of the Clay County School District board said she was "disgusted" by some of the books available in the school library. One of the books she mentioned was Jonathan Evison's 'Lawn Boy', which describes a boy recalling oral sex from when he was "ten years old." Another book titled "Julian is a Mermaid" tells the story of a boy who repeatedly strips down to his underwear and goes on to wear lipstick and a headdress. At one point, he is given costume jewelry and taken to the NYC Mermaid Parade where he can freely express himself. Controversial author Alice Sebold's "Lucky" was also among the books in question as it discussed details of a college girl being raped.

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"I don't think there's any justification for it. And I can tell you my own research in our school library so far I've identified 75 books that I'm working to challenge to get off of ourselves," Gilhousen told Fox News. The mother of three Clay County public school boys said "disciplinary action" was appropriate for those responsible for placing inappropriate books in front of impressionable students in public schools. "I'm disgusted that anybody would think that that's appropriate material to have in a school library," Gilhousen said. "There needs to be disciplinary action for anybody who offers this kind of material to a child," she added.

The school board member laid part of the blame on media specialists who met with publishers to bring in books for school libraries. According to her, publishers may present a list of bestselling books recommended for kids, which are then ordered in. However, they will often add "bonus books" into an order. "Some of those are more politically driven agenda-type books are snuck in that way," Gilhousen explained. 

It's worth noting that Gilhousen was part of a June 30 board meeting that went viral after a dad's microphone was abruptly cut off when he attempted to read controversial passages from books in the district's library. "These books are so vile that reading any excerpt that I captured will end this interview," the parent Bruce Friedman later told Fox News. "Somebody failed drastically in their mission to protect children. As soon as I announced that I was going to read from some books that parents… found in the public school libraries that are clearly pornographic, [they] had the mic cut off."

In the same meeting, however, the board adopted a state of emergency, which led to the creation of a "mechanism so that as soon as a book is challenged, it's removed from the shelf until it's reviewed."

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"We need to create a mechanism that spells out very plainly who is held accountable for the books that are on the shelves. And it obviously starts with the library media center specialists, but those purchases are then signed off by the principal who is then accountable to the superintendent," Gilhousen explained, adding, "I don't understand how anybody could make such an egregious mistake."