Monday, August 10, 2026

Silenced for Speaking Up: When Opposing Explicit Materials for Children Triggers Free Speech Restrictions in New Jersey

When the topic is children having access to s[*]xually explicit or otherwise inappropriate materials in school and public libraries, free speech in New Jersey is frequently restricted. Boards cut off parents reading from the books themselves, deny public comment, end livestreams, and even silence fellow elected board members. The pattern is consistent and documented.

Two recent examples illustrate the problem clearly.

In Freehold, the Public Library Board of Trustees held a special meeting on August 5, 2026. The agenda focused on personnel matters involving Library Director Kathy Mulholland after an independent investigation into workplace concerns. Those concerns included the director’s stance allowing patrons to view p[*]rnography on public computers, including in view of others and children. Despite a motion from Freehold Borough Mayor Kevin A. Kane (Democrat) to allow public comment, the board voted against it. Attendees were left to protest as they left the room. I stated, “So much for free public speech in a public library,” and received audible support from others present. A board member claimed the board values free speech; the reply was that a vote against public comment demonstrated otherwise.¹

The library’s own Code of Conduct reinforces the problem. Adopted March 26, 2024, it lists among prohibited behaviors: “Obvious consumption or sharing of obscene content in the library.” By limiting the ban to obvious consumption, the policy implies that non-obvious (discreet) viewing or sharing of obscene material is permitted. This is consistent with reports that the director treated the viewing of p[*]rnography on public computers as acceptable so long as it was not blatant. A policy that effectively allows obscenity inside a public library—including potentially in the presence of children—is the opposite of protecting minors.²

In Bridgewater-Raritan, elected Board of Education member Jeremy Li has repeatedly been shut down when he attempts to place inappropriate library materials or parental notification measures on the public record. Video from a recent meeting shows Li speaking about prohibiting visual or explicit written descriptions in elementary and middle school libraries. The superintendent and board president walked out. The public stream was then ended. Li has described earlier instances in which a recess was called and his microphone cut mid-speech while he advocated for a parental notification amendment that would allow parents to prevent their own children from checking out s[*]xually explicit books. The amendment did not remove any books; it sought to put parents “back in the driver’s seat.”³

These are not isolated incidents of “decorum.”

Elected Officials Silenced

Jeremy Li’s experience is particularly significant because he is an elected official exercising oversight. The board is supposed to oversee the superintendent, not the reverse. When discussion of library materials is terminated by walkouts and by ending the public record, the public is denied the very transparency school boards are required to provide.

Parents and Citizens Silenced

In Wayne Township in October 2021, parent Pamela Macek stood at the podium during public comment and began reading passages from Gender Queer: A Memoir, a book available in the high school library that contains explicit illustrations and text. Within approximately 14 seconds, Board President Catherine Kazan interrupted her, stating it was inappropriate with young people present and that she should “verbalize [her] complaint without reading the book.” Macek continued. Her microphone was cut. She kept speaking without it. The president called for police assistance and threatened to clear the room.⁴

The Freehold denial of public comment follows the same logic: the substance of the complaint (children’s exposure to p[*]rnography on library computers) is treated as grounds to restrict speech about it.

Even Discussing an Ethics Complaint Is Restricted

In North Hunterdon-Voorhees, I filed an ethics complaint in October 2024 concerning the board’s handling of school library materials. When I attempted to discuss the status of my own complaint at subsequent meetings, I was shut down—first by the board attorney, later by the board president—over speculative concerns about confidentiality or potential defamatory statements. A prior speaker who criticized the same complaint was allowed to speak. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reviewed the record and sent a letter to the board. FIRE described the selective enforcement as viewpoint discrimination and unconstitutional. The letter asked the board to rescind any policy or practice that prohibits referencing ethics complaints and to allow commenters to discuss relevant district matters.⁵

Why This Pattern Exists

The consistent silencing of parents, citizens, and even elected board members who object to s[*]xually explicit materials for children is not random. It follows directly from American Library Association policy.

In its official interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights titled “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors,” the ALA states that “all people, of all ages, should have equal and equitable access to all library resources and services.” It explicitly declares that policies preventing minors from accessing the same resources and services as adults violate the Library Bill of Rights. Article V of that document provides that a person’s right to use a library “should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” The ALA interpretation treats any restriction based solely on age, apparent maturity, or educational level as a violation of that principle.⁶

Under this framework, efforts to keep inappropriate materials away from children are reframed as age discrimination. Libraries are instructed not to act in loco parentis; only parents may restrict their own children’s access. The practical result is that public and school library boards, trained and guided by ALA standards, treat parental concerns about explicit content as an attack on intellectual freedom rather than a legitimate request for age-appropriate standards. When citizens or board members challenge that orthodoxy, the institutional response is often to shut down the discussion itself.

How to Fix This

The silencing of parents, citizens, and elected board members is a downstream effect of a single upstream decision: the adoption of American Library Association policy as if it were binding law.

It is not.

The Library Bill of Rights and its interpretations—including the one that treats age-based restrictions as discrimination—are internal documents of a private trade association. They have no force of law. No statute requires any public library or school library in New Jersey (or anywhere else) to follow them. Boards that claim they are “powerless” to keep inappropriate material away from children are not powerless. They have simply chosen to subordinate local authority to ALA guidance.

The remedy is straightforward:

1. Remove all ALA policy from library and school board policies. 
Delete the Library Bill of Rights, every interpretation of it, and any language that incorporates ALA standards on intellectual freedom, access for minors, or collection development. These documents function as the camel’s nose under the tent, pictured top right. Once adopted, they are used to argue that any effort to protect children is censorship or age discrimination.

2. Return to local law, community standards, and common sense.
Public libraries and school libraries operate under state statutes, local ordinances, and the authority of elected or appointed boards. Those boards have both the legal power and the responsibility to set age-appropriate standards, require parental consent where appropriate, filter content, and remove materials that violate community standards or applicable law (including New Jersey’s obscenity statutes regarding minors, like N.J.S. 2C:34-3).

3. Assert that authority clearly.
Boards should adopt policies that explicitly state they are not bound by ALA guidance and that decisions about materials available to children will be guided by local community standards, parental rights, and the best interests of minors—not by a private organization’s ideological framework.

Libraries are not required to treat a 10-year-old the same as a 40-year-old. They never were. The claim that they must do so comes from ALA policy, not from the US Constitution nor New Jersey law. When boards delete that policy and reclaim their own authority, the institutional pressure to silence parents and dissenting board members loses its foundation.

The power has always been local. It simply has to be exercised.

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Endnotes


1. Freehold Public Library Board of Trustees special meeting, August 5, 2026. Contemporaneous reporting and video documentation of the vote against public comment; Shore News Network, “Head Librarian Who Allowed P[*]rn Use on Computers Faces Uncertain Future in Freehold,” August 6, 2026; contemporaneous posts from attendees including the author.


2. Freehold Public Library, Library Code of Conduct, adopted March 26, 2024, p. 3. Available via the library’s Services page: https://freeholdpubliclibrary.org/services.php (Google Drive link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-UeGKjZIV35sAhQEs9h4UOaMYW7C0QGh/view). The policy prohibits only “Obvious consumption or sharing of obscene content in the library.”




3. Video of Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education meeting showing walkouts and the stream being ended while Jeremy Li addressed library materials; Jeremy Li public statements and Facebook posts describing earlier microphone cuts and recesses during discussion of a parental notification amendment for s[*]xually explicit books (2025–2026).  Start at 1:37:36 and go to 1:45:32.


4. ProPublica, “The Conservative Transformation of the Wayne Township School Board,” June 29, 2023 (detailing the October 2021 meeting); TapInto Wayne and local coverage of the October 7, 2021 Board of Education meeting, including video of the interruption and microphone cut while Pamela Macek read from Gender Queer.

5. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), “New Jersey school board shuts down speaker for discussing his own ethics complaint,” June 18, 2026. The article documents the selective restriction on discussion of my October 2024 ethics complaint regarding North Hunterdon-Voorhees Board handling of school library materials and FIRE’s formal letter to the board.

6. American Library Association, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights,” https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/minors (accessed August 2026). The interpretation states that policies preventing minors from accessing the same resources as adults violate the Library Bill of Rights and that any restriction based solely on age violates Article V.

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Location: New Jersey, USA

Sunday, August 2, 2026

The Double Standard: 'Destroy Them' and 'Go In for the Kill' Are Just Idioms—But a Red Circle Around a Librarian's Head Is Targeting

In the recent discussion of cartoonist Ryan Estrada, we saw him publish guidance for authors and activists confronting parents who challenge materials in school libraries. One section states: “And then, you get to the fun part… SIX: Destroy them; Everyone is on your side and paying attention. Now you go in for the kill.” (Emphasis in original.) He has also offered to provide more “ammunition” to those who email him. When called out, Estrada has framed the language as figurative—an idiom—and responded with a comic casting a critic as the big bad wolf.¹

Contrast that with the treatment of school librarian Amanda Jones.

In July 2022, after Jones spoke against censorship at a Livingston Parish Library Board meeting in Louisiana, the Facebook page of Citizens for a New Louisiana posted a photo of her speaking. The image placed a red circle (with a white border) around her head and asked why she was “fighting so hard to keep s[*]xually erotic and p[*]rnographic materials in the kid’s section.”²

Jones later described the circle as a “target.” In her memoir That Librarian she wrote: “They posted a picture of me with a target around my head. According to them, it’s just a circle, but who are they kidding?”³ She launched multi-year defamation lawsuits against the posters, arguing the image and accompanying text damaged her reputation and contributed to harassment.⁴

Yet her first reaction was different. In a training video she recorded for other librarians (August 28, 2023), Jones herself admitted:

“When I first started being attacked, I thought ‘This is not serious, like this is ridiculous.’ I went on their page and put the laughing emoji… and I wish I could take that back cuz it’s not funny… and they talk about that all the time. ‘She put the laugh, she thinks it’s funny.’ So I learned that the hard way.”⁵



What she initially treated as absurd enough to laugh at publicly became, within weeks, the foundation of sustained litigation. A red circle is one of the most ordinary tools in digital photo editing and annotation—the default highlight function in countless apps precisely because it draws the eye without implying violence. Treating that common editing mark as actionable “targeting” while dismissing explicit militaristic language directed at parents (“Destroy them,” “go in for the kill,” offers of “ammunition”) as mere idiom is the double standard in plain view.

Parents who speak at school board or library meetings are fair game for destruction rhetoric and cartoon portrayals as the big bad wolf. Librarians and their allies who face ordinary visual highlighting of their public comments receive multi-year lawsuits, national media sympathy, and awards for courage.

One set of statements is explained away as colorful language. The other is treated as a serious threat of violence—even when the person later suing over it first responded with a laughing emoji.





If you're a big bad wolf who wishes to support the legal defense of free speech against double standards and SLAPP-style suits arising from reporting on these issues:  

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END NOTES


2. The original Facebook post and the red-circle description appear in Jones’s own petition for damages (filed August 2022) and are summarized in contemporaneous reporting:  

3. Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (Bloomsbury, 2024), quoted in Oprah Daily, August 27, 2024: https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/books/a61600534/the-librarian-amanda-jones-book-bans/

4. Court records and appellate history confirming the multi-year litigation:  

5. Transcript of Amanda Jones’s August 28, 2023 training video for librarians (timestamp ~16:04), published on SafeLibraries, September 2024: https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2024/09/amanda-jones-trains-librarians-to-blind.html  


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Location: Livingston Parish, LA, USA

Saturday, August 1, 2026

'Destroy Them': Cartoonist Ryan Estrada Turns Real Dictatorship Book Bans into a Campaign Against American Parents

Ryan Estrada is a cartoonist who gained prominence in part through the real experiences of his wife, Kim Hyun-sook (also rendered Gim Hyeon-suk or Hyun Sook). Under South Korea’s military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, she participated in an underground “banned book club” that read forbidden works by Paulo Freire, Che Guevara, Noam Chomsky, Betty Friedan, and others. She faced genuine risks of surveillance, arrest, interrogation, or worse, and was interrogated by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. That was actual government book banning and suppression of dissent.

Estrada later used his artistic skills to depict her experiences. He has since leveraged that platform to promote the American Library Association’s narrative of “book bans” in the United States. In the U.S. context, the term is routinely applied to parents and community members who object to certain materials in public school libraries or classrooms—materials many view as age-inappropriate. Critics of this framing, including parents speaking at public meetings, are frequently labeled “book banners,” “extremists,” or “Christofascists.”

Estrada has gone further. He has published detailed guidance for authors and others on how to confront parents who challenge books at school board meetings. One section includes the language: “And then, you get to the fun part… SIX: Destroy them; Everyone is on your side and paying attention. Now you go in for the kill.” (Emphasis in original.)

I previously highlighted the danger in that rhetoric (July 27, 2025). 


Today Estrada reframes my criticism as a claim that “AUTHORS WANT TO ‘KILL’ PARENTS!!!” and responds with a comic titled “KILL `EM WITH KINDNESS,” casting me as the big bad wolf. The comic was presented at the Perth Comics Festival 2026.

I documented the sequence here::


Others have also noted the pattern:


One reader even points out that Estrada harassed him for several days and ended up censoring citizens:



I am currently defending against SLAPP-style lawsuits related to reporting on these issues. If you wish to support the legal defense of free speech in these matters: 


NOTE ADDED EVEN DATE:

Already Ryan Estrada has responded to the above post.  He essentially doubled down.

"...and just since the person mentioned here wrote a whole essay on the premise that he never said it, here it is."

He shows a graphic that does not say, "authors want to 'kill' parents!!!"  Instead, it says, "authors ... oppose parents."  It's not the same.  And he quoted me saying, "Author makes call to 'kill' parents...."  He did.

Then he follows up with a second post:

"But he knows that, as even in the very rant where he claims he didn't, he calls me a 'stochastic terrorist' for using the idiom 'go in for the kill' in the context of public debate.

"Bro confuses kindness with obedience so thinks a public disagreeing with him is not just unkind, but terrorism."

Here he continues to lie and mischaracterize to cover up that I outed what he did/said.  

"Rant," he says.  I had nothing to say about him for quite a while until he wrote an entire comic making me the big bad wolf where it was displayed at the Perth Comics Festival.  I guess I'm in good company given cartoons like this:




I did not "rant."  I responded.  And I would not have responded had he not lied in a way that threatens me with his stochastic terror.  He said that I said, and has since doubled down on that, that authors want to "kill" parents.  He knows that's a lie but that it will rile people up.  

Indeed one responder has already said, "I would love to read more about this idea that authors want to 'kill' parents, that's wild."  Another said, "Aw, c'mon, Ryan, how is a raving lunatic supposed to remember every rant?"  To that, Estrada responds by admitting to misquoting me, but keeps up the ridicule: "I do regret that I got one word of the quote wrong, because 'makes call to kill parents' is actually a much funnier misquoting of my original point."  Is he admitting to intentionally misquoting me to be "much funnier"?

I did not claim stochastic terror was caused by an idiom nor that it was in the context of public debate.  That's his words.  Rather I linked his entire piece for full context, and it's in the context of what he wrote, not public debate.  That context includes his writing detailed directions for others to target parents who challenge books.  

Among other things, he says the "fun part" is when you "destroy them" and "go in for the kill."  "Go in for the kill" are the only words he put in bold font.  If I said that about school librarians, if I wrote a long piece to urge other parents to eliminate obstructions by school librarians, if I said the "fun part" is when you "destroy them" and "go in for the kill," you can bet Estrada and many others would be calling that stochastic terror and calling for me to be investigated and mass canceled. 

If I recall correctly, Estrada previously reported me to the FBI essentially for stochastic terror.  He reported that I tweeted urging parents to attend an American Library Association conference.  I did.  I do.  Parents should attend to see for themselves how children are harmed by ALA policy and practices.  When they do they are shocked that the vast majority of training is about DEI.  Taxpayer money pays to send librarians to ALA conferences to learn about librarianship, not about DEI.  It's a legitimate concern to raise.  It's not stochastic terror to urge people to attend ALA conferences.  

But apparently he thought that was because any excuse to silence me and parents like me can and will be used.  So if he can say it's stochastic terror for me to say parents should go to ALA conferences, then I can certainly say the full context of what he wrote, including the "fun part" is when you "destroy them" and "go in for the kill," is stochastic terror.

This is not a case with the public not agreeing with me, as he implies because he always belittles people with whom he disagrees.  This is not a case about me at all.  That's misdirection.  This is a case where he is providing specific training on how to eliminate parental opposition to inappropriate material in schools by using "fun" training to "destroy them" and "go in for the kill" at school board meetings, then he goes on to mock people who call him out for providing such training.  And he makes it sound palatable by raising the specter of real censorship by a Korean dictator and comparing it with America parents who wish to keep inappropriate books out of American public schools.  Inappropriate books in schools like this one, "Gravity's Rainbow":


Yes, he's not going to kill anyone and he's not openly urging that, but stochastic terror is the public demonization of someone in a way that is statistically likely to inspire random acts of violence by ideologically motivated individuals, while Estrada maintains plausible deniability.  Stochastic itself means random or probabilistic.  Over time, someone in a large audience, and he has one, relatively speaking, almost 16K followers on Bluesky, may act out to have "fun" "destroying" and "killing" someone he maligns as he does, like he is maligning me.  What he said is false and is not legitimate political criticism.  I would never say about school librarians what he says about parents.  Go have fun destroying and killing.  No one would.

The more he speaks, the more he reveals about himself (like his admitting to a misquote).

Do not allow this man Ryan Estrada to attend any school or library event, whether in person or via electronic means.

That's my opinion, anyway.


Quote from @ProtectSaladoKs:

He sure has an interesting way of spreading kindness.

Don’t forget this gem from “The Ryan Estrada Method”: 😆

“If you ever ... need some hints on where to look for the ammo to destroy them, feel free to email ...”

If anyone wants a fun mental challenge, explain—without reference to Cluster B personality disorders—how Mr. Estrada expresses kindness in the following (real) terms he uses to describe people who want to protect children from harmful material in libraries:

- lying book banners
- angry anti-book activists who insult [board members] with zero care or empathy
- complete idiots
- dumb dorks
- terrible people

To be clear, using strong, even forceful language is not objectionable per se. (Although Mr. Estrada’s is often belligerent and frankly militaristic. In today’s climate, post-Charlie Kirk, parents have every right to raise an eyebrow.) What is worthy of critique—and yes, ridicule—is the utter lack of self-awareness in claiming his primary tactic is kindness, when it patently is not.

https://archive.ph/pEJCS#selection-427.0-427.142



NOTE DATED 2 AUGUST 2026:

The next day after I published the above I have published a new and related post:
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