Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education - Jere Krischel - 08/15/2023

I don't believe in God, but I love the people I go to church with every Sunday. I can't understand being attracted to a man, but I love and appreciate my gay friends and family, not to mention my wife. I regularly challenge myself to connect with people I disagree with about the fundamental nature of the universe - but sadly, it has been very difficult to find the grace and space from the woke left to make these kinds of connections.Show more

Here's what would be nice to hear from our woke friends: "Jere, you're right, some content is too explicit for some children. But it's deeply important to us, to have the historically marginalized given some attention, so that the future isn't filled with the same injustices as the past. We'd love to work together to find books that we can both agree on, so that you get the controls over explicit materials, and we get to support kids who might not feel normal."

Maybe such an expectation of grace is too much. Perhaps the people pushing explicit materials to children are afraid of showing vulnerability, or maybe their hearts are so filled with resentment, that they cannot believe their opponents are engaging in good faith. I'm still genuinely interested in understanding, and reaching across the divide, and my monthly invitation of a free lunch has no expiration date. But I also understand that if people feel like they are on the side of righteousness, in a war worth fighting, it's easy to dehumanize the people you disagree with to keep your rage burning powerfully against any self introspection.

And on this they're right - this is a culture war being waged. I mean, I'm not saying that the head of the American Library Association is a marxist lesbian fighting for communist solidarity, but the head of the American Library Association says she is a marxist lesbian fighting for communist solidarity. The long march of the left through our institutions has happened in the shadows for decades, and while we may have argued that the changes have been small, or the impact has been minimal, it's hard to continue doing so when leading presidential candidates get indicted by rogue Fulton County DAs for disagreeing with the woke narrative on election integrity.

As corrupt as the rich men north of Richmond are, our fight ends up somewhere closer to home - even closer than we think. It's not just our local school board that becomes an arena for cultural battle, it's each one of our individual souls. It's having the willingness to have uncomfortable discussions with people you disagree with. It's taking a leap of faith and forgiving someone for baking swastika gingerbread. It's about talking with each other, instead of past each other, about the problems of the past and the promises of the future. It's about moving from our culture war, to a culture peace, no matter how delicate that peace may be.

And so to promote this kind of woke-conservative reconciliation, I'd like to ask the Board to support and institute parental involvement, from all political sides of the aisle, in the process of adding new books to our libraries. We have focused so much on getting individual explicit books out of the hands of children, we've lost track of building consensus about the books we can agree should be in the hands of our children.

I believe that if we can work together when choosing which books actually get into our schools, we can fight a whole lot less about getting inappropriate books out of our schools. And maybe, just maybe, build some peace.

And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.