On Sunday, May 1, Robert Morris, senior pastor of Gateway Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, encouraged his congregation to vote for 13 people running for office in upcoming local elections. Morris emphasized that voting in these elections is crucial to keeping pornographic content out of Texas school districts.
“If someone in your family, a cousin or something, was running, you’d want to know about it,” said Morris. “So we’ve gathered the churches in the Southlake, Colleyville, Keller, Grapevine area, and we’ve been talking with the pastors and all and just saying, is there someone in the family of churches that’s running?”
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Robert Morris: We Need to Combat Pornography in Schools
The elections Pastor Robert Morris referred to will take place May 7, although he encouraged people to participate in early voting from April 25 to May 3. Nine of the thirteen people he recommended to Gateway Church are running for positions on local school boards. “These are members of the family of churches in this area,” said Morris. “We’ve met with them, we’ve talked with them.”
“Here’s what I’m asking you to do,” said the pastor. “I’m asking you to pray for the people who are running, who are members of family, but I’m asking you to pray for everyone. Ok? Pray for everyone who is running.”
Before showing the names of the candidates on the screen, Morris spent some time describing the problem of pornographic material in Texas school systems. There are books in school libraries with content “as pornographic as anything you’ve ever read,” he said.
Sexually explicit content in Texas public schools has been a statewide, hot-button issue for some months now. When Morris showed the names of the candidates running for office in the Keller Independent School District (KISD) in the city of Keller, Texas, he commented that KISD is a “very important school district.”
In the fall of 2021, parents confronted KISD over books they deemed to be pornographic, including a graphic novel titled “Gender Queer,” which contains explicit illustrations of oral sex. On Nov. 1, 2021, Texas Gov. Gregg Abott issued a letter directing the Texas Association of School Boards to investigate allegations of pornographic content in Texas school systems and to remove any such content it finds.
That same month, over 1,500 people signed a petition organized by Texas mothers calling for 90 books to be removed from the libraries of KISD. In December 2021, The Texas Tribune reported that the Texas Education Agency is investigating whether or not KISD libraries are carrying pornographic material.
