“60 Minutes” host Scott Pelley pressed the co-founders of Moms for Liberty on sexually explicit books in schools during a combative segment that aired Sunday.
“We love teachers,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich told Pelley. “My children have had the best teachers. I’ve had the greatest teachers that have influenced and impacted me.”
“But there are rogue teachers in America’s classrooms right now,” Descovich added.
“Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said.
“What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?” Pelley asked.
Descovich replied, “Let’s just say children in America cannot read.”
Pelley then narrated over the segment, claiming, “They often dodged questions with talking points.”
“You’re being evasive,” Pelley told them. “What ideology are the children being indoctrinated into? What is your fear?”
“I think the parents’ fears are realized,” Justice responded. “They’re looking at these books where sexual discussions are happening with their children at younger and younger ages.”
Pelley again narrated over the segment as Justice was seen reading examples from books that she brought in to show the sexually explicit nature of the books in question.
“Tiffany Justice read from sexually explicit books written for older teens but found in a few lower schools,” Pelley said. “Most people wouldn’t want them in a lower school. But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes these examples are not rare mistakes but a plot to sexualize children.”
A number of books that have come under national attention, including “Gender Queer,” have been challenged by parents and at school board meetings across the country.
“Gender Queer” is a graphic novel that has been called “pornographic” by critics and courted major controversy for its images and explicit descriptions of oral sex and masturbation.
Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization founded in 2021, has capitalized on anger from parents amid controversy over allegedly sexually explicit books present in public school classrooms and school libraries.
In West Virginia, Republicans are seeking to allow criminal charges to move forward against teachers and librarians who expose children to sexual material after parents around the country have complained about pornographic content in books in schools.
