[Dave Pellowe] Content warning. If you think we should have had one already, this is the one to be aware of. Technically, so you know, there are probably five slides in this that are just beyond the pale and really gross to look at.

The confronting thing is that the powers that be have deemed this “no problem” and fully acceptable for our children. I just want to take care to explain the great thought and prayer that has gone into this, and Angela will tell you more about it herself.

The benefit of seeing it, I think, has biblical precedent in the story of the Israelite who was travelling and unable to return home in the day he was travelling. He stopped at a village on his way, and somebody in the town square invited him to come in. I don’t remember the full details right now, but the man’s concubine was left outside for the night, and she was horribly treated by the locals—violently—and ended up dead.

And the man was outraged at the lack of hospitality, the gross violence, and immorality that occurred. And it’s really explicit what the Bible says happened next: he dismembered his concubine and sent pieces of her around the nation. That’s kind of what we’re doing today.

We’re providing a visual cue for appropriate outrage, because that was the purpose. This is a gross travesty of justice—mis-justice—and you actually need to know how horrible it is. That is the content warning, as strongly as I can put it.

I’ve seen them, and yeah—they’re stomach-turning. And it grieves me that our young, impressionable, innocent children would have access to these. Even then, some of them are so beyond what should be legal that we have censored the very worst of them. And so that is the introduction to this session: “What’s in the books that you don’t know your children and grandchildren have access to?” It should be criminal. It is definitely immoral.

So yes—please protect your spirit, especially if you’re sensitive. And that’s a good thing if you are, not something to shy away from. So now let me introduce our speaker.

Our speaker is another lady who’s just a mum. And I use air quotes over the word “just,” because I think motherhood is the highest vocational calling possible for a woman, and something no man has access to. I feel sorry for single dads who have to try to replace God’s designed role for a mother in their children’s lives.

And let me tell you from a political sense: mothers are absolutely key to the future sustainability, flourishing, safety, and security of our nation. Because without good citizens, you do not have good governments or good nations—and you do not have good citizens without good mothers. It’s incredibly difficult.

And so Angela is not “just a mum,” if there was such a thing. She’s also an accredited classifier—not someone who works for the Australian Board of Classification, but someone able to work in-house for companies that need classification, such as game publishers, book publishers, and film publishers.

And she will tell you a lot more about her experience, background, and how she came to be a mama bear fighting for the children of Australia. So please welcome to Church and State Perth: Angela Rojas.

[Angela Rojas] Good evening, everyone. My name is Angela Rojas, and I’ll be talking about books you don’t know your kids can borrow.

I started this journey as a concerned mum, and now I’m an accredited classifier and assessor for film and games. I can’t classify publications—film and games only—just to clarify that.

What happened was: my kids are in middle school and high school now, but they were in primary school in government schooling. And for a number of personal reasons, I decided to homeschool for a period of time before finding a really good Christian school, which was very hard as a single parent—not always affordable—but I made it work for them.

So I homeschooled for a couple of years. And while visiting public libraries, they were looking for books, and on full-front display—not the regular shelves—were sex and relationship books. So I had a look.

And I thought, wow… am I old-fashioned, or is there something wrong? Because these are… And I asked a lot of people: “Am I overthinking this? Is this right? Is this wrong?” And I was fine—I was right. No, this is not acceptable.

So I decided to take action. And I prayed to God, and I said, “Tell me what to do.” And God gave me this vision of speaking publicly about pornographic books. And I said, “Why? Why those two things—public speaking and pornographic books? They’re the hardest combination possible.” Yet here I am: travelling around South Australia, and now Western Australia, talking about pornographic children’s books.

So on a personal scale, that was the hardest thing to overcome.

This presentation will not be sugar-coated. These images can be confronting and may trigger people. Our worldview has been distorted. Over the years, as a society, we have become conditioned to accept changes to our lifestyle—especially regarding what our children are being exposed to.

Warning: the next three slides are screen clippings from the classifiers’ training program for games. I use video games because they’re not real life; a lot of them are cartoony. Keep these ratings in mind for comparison when I show book examples further down.

So this is a PG: sexualised references. You can see the costume of the female character, and she says, “Do good and I might let you touch my marshmallow.” That gives it a PG.

This is a still image of a sex scene. Books are full of still images. If there’s no movement, no noise—just a still image—it gave that video game an M rating.

This is an MA. Speaking on mocking Christianity in video games—this one got an MA because it’s interactive. You can adjust the breast size, the genitalia of the female character. The image alone would probably be around an M if it wasn’t interactive. But would this be considered hate speech?

Well, think about it—what’s happening. And I don’t want to keep this image up; we’ll go to the next slide. But you know, I’ve been thinking about the hate speech discussions recently, and the pride marches, and how they mocked Christianity with those crucifixes. And they’ve had it hidden all this time in video games and things like that.

Continuing on.

In February 2023, I gave a deputation speech. I contacted my local council, and they asked—“What is a deputation speech?” A deputation speech is when you speak at a public meeting. My topic was sex resources for children in our public libraries.

My goal was to have these sexual books placed in the parenting collections, where children cannot access them easily.

A month later, I received a memo response suggesting I contact the Public Library Services South Australia. In South Australia we have a one-card network system that’s different to every other state. I’m not sure what happens in Western Australia.

I have one library card. I can go to any public library across South Australia, borrow a book, go to any other part of South Australia and return it, and they can transfer books. So that means one council doesn’t control one library—it’s all the councils. It makes it a lot harder for councils to control. And this is the barrier.

So I contacted the Public Library Services, and I also contacted the Australian Classification Office, and I was told over the phone that books do not get classified, unlike adult magazines.

I wrote to Public Library Services about my concerns. They hold the position that books should be free from censorship, and when it comes to children it’s the responsibility of the parent. Now I agree with this—but they shouldn’t have books on full-front display.

I wasn’t satisfied. I took a few of the books to my local police station, and I’ll tell you which books they were when I get to the examples. The officer in charge didn’t know what to do and referred me to Consumer and Business Affairs.

I called Consumer and Business Affairs; they didn’t know what to do and referred me to the Ombudsman or legal services.

I called the Classification Board again; they told me to contact the Licensing Enforcement Branch, which is a branch of SAPOL—South Australian Police.

The next day I received an email from the officer in charge telling me to contact my local council.

They sent me on one big loop. No one took responsibility.

In March last year, I gave another deputation speech at the Port Adelaide and Enfield Council meeting: “Sexually Explicit Books for Children in Our Public Libraries.”

The Friday before my deputation, I received this email:

“Dear Angela,
My name is Abby Dixon, and I’m currently the Acting CEO of the City of Port Adelaide and Enfield…”

(She then explains the images are explicit and may cause offence, that elected members should feel safe, and that I should describe the material rather than display it.)

Pretty much: adult elected members in the chamber needed to feel safe, and the images might offend them.

I emailed back and said,

“Can I offer censored and uncensored versions?”

And the mayor was happy with that. So we offered two sets, and I started my speech explaining the reasons.

In South Australian libraries, with all libraries combined in 2023—just in the children’s section, not including teens—there were over 96 titles. Multiply that by the number of copies—we’re talking thousands of books. LGBTQ titles: a lot more than the sex-instruction books for children. Transgender titles: more again. These are individual titles, not counting graphic novels or fiction.

Four book examples for target audiences aged 2 to 4 years old contained gender identity, sex positivity, “curious body,” consent. Okay—body stages for young kids might be okay—but gender identity?

Every time I think about gender identity, pronouns, the “them/they” for one person… I think: how many demons are there for one “them/they”? There must be a legion attached to a person. Yeah—well, that’s it. These are very concerning, especially when you think about books like Tell Me About Sex, Grandma. That had consent in there. Why does a four-year-old need to know about consent?

This book, The Amazing True Story of How Babies Are Made—in South Australia we have the Premier’s Reading Challenge book list, an incentive for children to read X number of books. This one is for Reception to Year 2—ages 5 to 7.

This was added to the Premier’s Reading Challenge in 2016. I don’t even understand why, even on the hygiene page, they have three men showing—the social justice boxes all ticked: the coloured man, the white man, and the clown (that’s what it looks like). But it’s very detailed.

After I borrowed this book—there were maybe 40 copies across SA plus in schools—I exposed it. You can see on the bottom: it was deleted from the Premier’s Reading Challenge. All I had to do was expose it.

Another book with a target audience of 10 years old goes into everything you can think of that a 10-year-old shouldn’t think about: puberty, oral sex, vaginal and anal intercourse, abortion, conception, masturbation—everything. Technically speaking, with the nudity and sexualised images, compared to the classification examples, it would be M to MA if it were classified equally.

Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex and Relationships—target audience 14, but the author suggests it for “whoever needs it, whatever your age.” I posted a few images on social media—I received a restriction within minutes.

This book tells teens how to take nude photos and send them, and how to research pornography. It says

“Look up interviews with your favourite porn performers and go to the sites they recommend.”

I challenged this book with the Classification Board. They decided it should be legally unrestricted to all ages—no warning, no conditions. They said Penguin Random House is a reputable publishing company and essentially that it wasn’t of public interest.

I applied for a fee waiver because I’m an individual person—not a company. They denied it. It cost $790 to get the publication classified, and $10,000 to appeal.

Here are more examples for teens—graphic novels and non-fiction. They’re pornographic. They shouldn’t have sex toys, but they do.

The Boys. This book series belongs in graphic novels next to Superman and Batman. A man named Bernard Gaynor from Queensland—I’ve been in contact with him—was able to get Queensland to classify these books through enforcement.

I can’t show the images. They sat unrestricted for years. Three out of five came back Category 1, on par with adult magazines. I had taken these to police, councils, and Public Library Services before they were classified—no one acted.

Bernard succeeded. I wrote to libraries holding the books, saying

“They’re Category 1—they must be removed. Unrestricted access is illegal.”

They replied,

“It’s up to parents.”

I replied,

“In South Australia there’s a $5,000 penalty for Category 1 unrestricted.”

They did not reply—but every single copy of The Boys was removed.

Teaching resource catalogues—this is new. ShineSA is a third-party provider approved to teach sex and relationships programs.

Two examples:

Sex Safe and Fun (Teacher’s Guide):
Goes into “good sex” and “bad sex.” There’s no such thing as “bad sex”—bad sex is sexual violence, incest, rape, sex with children.

Sexuality, Relationships and Your Rights:
Explains the law: illegal to have sexual activity with animals, illegal to sext, explains what sex work is. Why do children need to learn about sex work? Sexual pleasure? Bestiality and incest—how does it end up in school curriculum? It’s in these books, under “sex and the law.”

We’ve heard about these things—seeing them makes it real. It blows your mind that a manuscript so sexually explicit ends up on shelves.

Let’s go through the Australian classification system. There is a plan.

Some actions I’ve been taking:
Three books—The Amazing True Story of How Babies Are Made, Icebreaker, and another—all have the same classification rating: legally unrestricted. Icebreaker was found at a South Australian Catholic school. A teacher told me it had “Fifty Shades of Grey–equivalent content.” I borrowed it. It has very strong sexualised language and sex scenes.

In classification, regardless of format, the principles are: Adults should be able to read/watch/play whatever they want. Minors should be protected from harm.

A “submittable publication” is one that contains depictions likely to be RC (refused classification), likely to offend a reasonable adult such that it shouldn’t be unrestricted, or unsuitable for minors.

Publishers like Penguin Random House and Kindle prohibit pornographic material. Acceptable Use Policies prohibit searching for pornography—but you can borrow equivalent content from shelves. Schools prohibit harmful content on laptops—but teachers can teach it.

To finish: terms like “offensive,” “pornographic,” and “sexually explicit”—no one knows what they mean anymore. No one enforces them.

In 2016 there was a crackdown on corporate pedophilia—advertising companies profiting from sexualising children. How much money are authors, distributors, and publishers earning from royalties, lending rights, art grants, and literary awards for sexualising children? Is this another form of corporate pedophilia?

Sometimes facing truth and reality is hard. Christianity is not just a religion—it’s a way of life.

Acts 14:27 says that God opens doors. Some doors are automatic—you must take steps. Some require push or pull. Some require unlocking—but we search outside ourselves. Some are revolving—requiring alignment with God or you get stuck in repeating cycles.

When we take action, it’s time to think about how we need to align with God, and how to take the steps to make the changes we want to see in the world. Thank you.