An 11-year-old Mainer named Knox Zajac confronted school board members by reading aloud from “smut” available at the Windham Middle School library, the Maine Wire reported. Most boys his age would be too immature to stand up and defy the adults in power, and that’s what made this encounter so notable.
Knox Zajac read aloud from a book he found in his school library. (Credit: Screenshot)
Young Knox displayed respect and maturity beyond his years as he explained the situation. Like most 11-year-old boys, Knox likes comic books. The librarian at his middle school suggested a graphic novel called Nick and Charlie. He took the book out, and to his surprise, it wasn’t about superheroes or intergalactic space exploration. It was about two boys engaging.
“When I [checked out Nick and Charlie] to show my dad it, the librarian asked if I wanted more and if I wanted a graphic novel version,” Knox said. He also explained that he found the book “on display on a stand” at the school’s library. Knox, still at a tender-enough age that he mispronounced “library” without the final “r,” read a brief, sex-drenched passage from Nick and Charlie to school board members, The Blaze reported.
The passage contains a graphic, blow-by-blow description of a sexual encounter between two boys. The passage also contains profanity. After Knox read the passage, his father, Adam Zajac, came to the lectern to offer his thoughts. “Listen to the parents,” Adam said, tapping a copy of Gender Queer on the lectern for emphasis. “I will be more than happy to focus my time and effort to the security of my child and children in this school.”
“I will be a thorn in your side,” Adam Zajac added. “I just want you to be aware of what you’ve awoken,” he continued. “The parents are here right now, and they’re speaking. And you need to listen and do something about it quickly,” he concluded, noting that it should not take “four months” to remove books of this nature from a middle school library.
Larry Lockman served in Maine’s House of Representatives from 2012-2020 and is the co-founder of the Maine First Project. “The stone-cold indifference of school board members to 11-year-old Knox’s presentation was telling. In effect, they have enshrined a new state religion in Maine classrooms, in defiance of the First Amendment,” Lockman told The Blaze in a statement. Lockman is offering a training session to equip parents to fight back against “anti-American political indoctrination in the classroom.”
The books that the Zajac father-son duo addressed at the school board meeting are “smut” put forward by “porn pushers,” according to Lockman. “The bad news is that this sort of depravity is the rule rather than the exception in Maine’s dysfunctional K-12 government-run schools. Meanwhile, academic achievement has flatlined over the past decade and a half,” he said.
“Another book in the high school library, Gender Queer, includes graphic depictions of minors engaging in sexual intercourse that could be mistaken for a how-to manual. The age advisory on this book is for readers 18 years of age and older,” Maine Wire reported. “Parents want age-appropriate limitations on access to these books — if they’re to be in the library at all. But most members of the school board disagree, and some community members think the board is taking steps to limit the involvement of parents in public meetings.”