Novel concept: Reporter reads 'Nineteen Minutes'
William Baer told Rich Girard he has not read “Nineteen Minutes,” the book that led to his arrest when he disrupted a Gilford school board meeting to protest.
Sarah Palermo has. The Concord Monitor reporter says the explicit scene that Baer calls pornographic – the now infamous page 313 – is not prurient. “It is a rape,” she writes. “It is the nadir of an abusive relationship woven into the narrative of the book:”
Yes, the Gilford teacher should have sent parents a notification about the book and the choice of alternate material for their children. But in the full context of this story, why would parents want an alternative? Why not use this book to talk to our sons and daughters about the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships?
It’s apparently easier to work the public into a fever about teenagers learning that semen is sticky than it is to tell them their bodies are their own, their lives have intrinsic value and anyone who hurts them – physically, sexually, or emotionally – does not love them.