‘Porn’ on election signs near Huntington Beach schools by councilman ‘inappropriate,’ officials say
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When Megan Fowler dropped her 9-year-old daughter off at Harbour View Elementary School in Huntington Beach on Monday morning she couldn’t miss seeing some political signs near the school entrance that she was not expecting.
“Protect Our Kids From Porn, No on A & B,” the large signs read. They were visible from the playground of the Ocean View School District school.
Fowler was worried about her daughter, who is in the third grade, having questions about the word “porn.” She said she felt the signs used her child as leverage in an adult debate.
“We haven’t even had the sex talk yet,” she said. “I was waiting until like 10 or 11. How can I explain ‘porn’ without having to go through all of that? I don’t want my child to be like me, who grew up in a super-conservative, right-wing Christian home, where I had to learn about sex through other kids at school. I feel like that’s my responsibility to inform my child. But she’s 9 years old. She’s a very innocent child to share this information with, but now the council, Chad Williams, has blatantly put these signs in her face.”
The city’s Community and Library Services Commission approved the design Tuesday night, despite more than 300 emails protesting the plaque.
Williams was one of three conservatives elected last November to form an all-MAGA Huntington Beach City Council. A political action committee he started recently, “Protect the Children With Councilman Chad Williams, Vote No on A and B,” is behind the signs.
The signs, many of which were hung near the city’s elementary schools, were put up late Sunday in advance of a special election in Huntington Beach scheduled for June 10.
At issue are two library measures. Measure A would repeal a parent/guardian children’s book review board, while Measure B would require voter approval before any future attempts to outsource services at the public library.
Some local parents took to social media to voice anger at Williams on Monday for the use of the word “porn,” shorthand for “pornography,” on the signs.
“It’s not even a conversation, it’s like an ambush,” said Desireé DeLattre, a Huntington Beach resident who immediately noticed signs at the corner of Adams Avenue and Bushard Street on Monday while taking her children to Orange Coast College Children’s Center in Costa Mesa. “Conversation is healthy, but this is just nothing that was on a parent’s bingo card this morning. The most important part of a parent’s job is to keep their children safe, and I think that with this short-sighted stunt, Chad Williams put our kids’ safety at risk.”
Williams, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who’s a youth pastor and public speaker, defended the signs and use of the word “porn” in a Monday interview.
“There is content in the library that is far worse than just the word,” he said. “The people that have pushed this sexual content, this obscene content in our public library have pushed this conversation into the public forum. There’s no debating that there is obscene content being made available to minors in the library. I can give a number of examples of what is depicted, but you probably wouldn’t be able to publish it, and that should tell you all you really need to know.”
Williams’ colleague on the City Council, Butch Twining, said he helped put up some of the signs Sunday night.
“To a certain extent, I understand where [parents] may be coming from on the ‘porn’ thing,” Twining said Monday. “But you know, ‘porn’ is a word that’s been thrown around in the public arena for years and years. Now, all of a sudden, ‘Oh my God, it’s like the F-word.’ The PAC that printed these things out probably weighed whether the word ‘porn’ was more upsetting than the actual porn books in the library, and they probably determined that the word ‘porn’ isn’t actually as upsetting as having actual porn in the library.”
Where’s the porn?
After a post that Twining made on social media recently, Ocean View School District Trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin and Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library member Carol Daus pushed back on that assertion of porn in the public library. They openly challenged Twining to meet them at the Central Library and show them where the porn is.
So far, he has passed on that request.
Ex-NFL player Chris Kluwe explains why he got arrested protesting Huntington Beach MAGA library sign
‘You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,’ he told the council during Tuesday’s meeting. The chambers erupted in applause.
“I don’t need to go on an Easter egg hunt in the library to go look among half-a-million books to find one,” Twining said. “I know they’re there, because I know I’ve got some here in my office.”
Clayton-Tarvin now has taken it a step further. She said she talked to Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer on Monday morning, requesting an investigation on the claims of porn in the library.
“They’re the governing board of the city,” she said of the members of the City Council. “If the books in the library are pornography, as they say, then they are purveyors of pornography. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter what their opinions are. Is it pornography? This is what the D.A. is going to look into, are these pornographic materials? And if it comes back that it’s not pornographic materials, then I guess we have our answers, don’t we?”
Williams said his concern was not about books like “Everyone Poops,” which was initially moved into a restricted area on the fourth floor of the Central Library but eventually returned to the children’s section. A recent Daily Pilot review of books that are currently in that restricted area found eight titles, the majority of them dealing with puberty.
“Library employees intentionally spotlit books like ‘Everyone Poops,’” Williams said. “These are not the books we’re talking about. It’s the books that talk about shoving household items up where people poop.”
He also mentioned a book titled “Identical,” which is cataloged as an adult book, though Williams said it is still available to minors. It deals with themes including rape and incest.
Since their 2022 election, a conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council has pursued Pride flag bans, book bans and voter ID requirements. Some residents wonder what all that has to do with running a city.
“I’m shedding light on the darkness that’s happening,” he said. “It’s been said, ‘All that’s required for evil to triumph is for good men to stand back and do nothing.’ There are those that would like to put their heads in the sand and look the other way, pretend it’s not there and not deal with it. Then there are those that are willing to take that stand and address it. I’m asking all of the responsible adults in the room, as it were, to take a stand and expose these works of darkness with the truth, with light.”
As for the “No on A and B” signs, reports surfaced that some of them were taken down Monday by angry community members, though the Huntington Beach Police Department reminded residents that removal and vandalism of election signs is a crime.
HBPD spokeswoman Jessica Cuchilla said Tuesday that there were four reports of vandalism on the signs, and two individuals had been cited and released.
One man, Jason Teter, said in a video posted to social media that he was responsible for cutting the word “porn” out of 12 of the signs, returning that part of the signs to City Hall.
Teter said he wrote an email to Williams, whom he voted for last November, stating that the election signs may be legal but he didn’t believe it was right to put the word “porn” in clear sight of children.
“Pornography is indeed a destructive force that exploits individuals and damages family,” Teter read aloud from the email he sent Williams. “But using the term so prominently in public spaces feels counterproductive to the very cause that you are trying to campaign. Frankly, it reads more like a tactic to provoke than a message grounded in conservative values, and that’s something I believe we should rise above.”
A letter sent to Ocean View School District families on Monday by Board of Trustees President Patricia Singer and Supt. Julianne Hoefer called the signs “inappropriate.”
“While the inappropriate signs are not affiliated with the district, we did want to reassure our families that our school libraries do not contain any inappropriate material,” the letter read, in part. “Our commitment to maintaining a safe, age-appropriate and educational environment for all students remains steadfast. We also recognize that some of our teachers have received questions from students regarding these inappropriate signs. In such instances, our educators are doing their best to thoughtfully redirect these conversations to parents and guardians, as these topics are most appropriate for family discussion.”
Huntington Beach, saying parents have a ‘right to know,’ seeks to block a state law shielding teachers from having to disclose students’ gender identity.
Fowler said she had friends on both sides of the political aisle who were upset, and she understood why. While she did not want to have that conversation with her daughter yet, she also knows the explicit websites that pop up when someone conducts an online search of the word “porn.”
“That’s what some of these kids are going to do,” she said. “That leads into a whole other conversation … so they’re exposing our children, deliberately, into what porn kind of unlocks. It’s like this key. Once it’s opened, it’s a downward spiral from there.”
Szabo writes for Times Community News.
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