Book Burning Urged By Spotsylvania School Board Members

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, VA — The Spotsylvania County School Board on Monday instructed school staff members to remove books that contain sexually explicit material from library shelves, with calls from two board members for the books to be burned.

At a special school board meeting next week, Spotsylvania County schools must report on the number of books that have been removed, the Free Lance-Star reported. The board voted 6-0 to order the removal of the books.

Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned, according to the Free Lance-Star.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said.

Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

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The Spotsylvania County School Board's vote came almost a week after Republican Glenn Youngkin won election as Virginia governor. During his winning gubernatorial campaign, Youngkin supported efforts by parents to ban books from school libraries.

After a Sept. 23 Fairfax County School Board meeting, Youngkin's campaign produced a political advertisement that included footage of community members at the meeting calling for the removal of books from high school libraries in the county.

In the political advertisement, Youngkin included footage of Stacy Langton, a parent of a Fairfax High School student, and Adrienne Henzel, a former Fairfax County Public Schools teacher, speaking out against LGBTQ-oriented books at the Sept. 23 school board meeting.

Abuismail, one of the two Spotsylvania County School Board members who called for the books to be burned, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Mary Washington in political science with a concentration in international relations. He has served on the board since 2020.

Twigg, the other school board member who called for the removed books to be burned, has served on the board since 2016.

Abuismail and Twigg had yet to respond to a request for comment from Patch on their statements at the Nov. 8 school board meeting.