Dupage Policy Journal

An ex-Democrat now Republican Committeeman from Darien quickly found himself in the middle of a nationwide battle to shield children from school library books that contain graphic depictions of gay sex. Two years in, Terry Newsome is getting good at the fight.

On August 22, he turned the tables on Congressman Sean Casten (D-Downers Grove) who hosted a roundtable at Indian Prairie Library on an anti-book banning law recently signed by Gov. JB Pritzker, a law that comes with the threat of stripping funding to ensure sexually graphic books like “Gender Queer” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” remain on library shelves.

Newsome, 62, who is president of the Illinois Chapter of the South Carolina-based U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), brought to the meeting blow-up posters of graphics from Gender Queer showing kids engaged in oral sex, and forced Casten into a rhetorical trap.

“Now I’m confused,” Newsome told the DuPage Policy Journal referring to the confrontation with Casten. “For two years we've been told by Hank Thiele, D99 Superintendent, principals and librarians that the oral sex images are not pornography, and then two weeks ago Casten chastises me for bringing what he now claims is pornography to the library. I would like to understand why after two years did Sean Casten change his mind agreeing these images are pornographic.

“Finally, I found one issue that Sean Casten and I see eye to eye on,” Newsome added sarcastically. “Hopefully Sean will join me and other parents of D99 in our request to remove pornography from our children’s school.”

Newsome inserted himself in the fight against the books in the summer of 2021 when his twins were incoming Downers Grove freshmen. Just a little over a year ago, he was targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has broadened its decades-old mission of protecting civil rights to being a hit squad for the left.

“Terry Newsome, 62, of Darien, Illinois, leads Illinois Parents Involved in Education,” the November 2022 SPLC statement said. “The group opposes public school policies such as accommodations for trans students, LGBTQ-inclusive education, and classroom discussion of the U.S. legacy of systemic racism.”

Newsome said he was devastated at first – he’s anything but racist or anti-gay – but with the SPLC designation of other pro-parent groups like Moms for Liberty and Moms For America as “hate groups,” he now feels more emboldened getting the truth out.

“It has given us momentum both locally and in Washington,” he said.

The battle over the books has been brewing for years. Founder and president of USPIE, Sheri Few, traces its origins back to at least 2010 when the South Carolina chapter led the fight against the Common Core standards.

“One of the many objections to the standards was the recommended reading list in the appendix,” Few told the DuPage Policy Journal. “The list included ‘The Bluest Eye’ by Toni Morrison, which is hardcore porn book including incest, rape and pedophilia from the perpetrators favorable point of view.”

"The head of the snake today is American Library Association (ALA) President Emily Drabinski," Few added. "She is a self-proclaimed lesbian Marxist and has said, ‘Libraries need to be a site of socialist organizing.’ She was a featured speaker at the Socialism 2023 conference where attendees applauded her efforts to push social justice into America’s libraries through her position.”

Few noted that "each state also has a library association affiliated with the ALA, and the state associations are passing along liberal ideologies to their libraries, which provide services and resources to school libraries.”

Newsome predicts that with Pritzker’s book banning law the number of pornographic books will explode in Illinois libraries.

“We are not book banners,” he said, “we are porn banners. The question to Casten and other school officials should be why do you think a LGBTQ child must self-identify with graphic sexual pornography to feel ‘included.”

“I personally think of them as children like mine, or any other child. They should be treated like children. Heterosexual children don’t need or want pornography in the school to represent them. Why should LGBTQ children.”