The Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, Tudor Dixon, offered to send a reporter pornography to help define what it is.
Ms Dixon wants to ban pornographic materials from schools and was asked by a reporter to define what that means to her.
“Do you need me to define pornographic?” Ms Dixon asked. “I mean, I can, if you want me to. So there’s two naked people and they are acting out a sexual act, multiple different sexual acts.”
“Do you want me to send you some so you can see them?” the gubernatorial nominee asked the reporter. “That would be fine ... I feel like it would be a little awkward.”
“We’ve got plenty here to show you,” one of her supporters appeared to say from the background.
“I did not expect to have a gubernatorial nominee define ‘pornography’ at a press conference but nothing about this election cycle has made sense,” Eric Lloyd of the 9 and 10 News tweeted on Tuesday as he shared some footage from a press conference with the political nominee.
“You know, when I asked the question I promise I didn’t intend for it to go this way,” Allison Donahue of the news site Michigan Advance responded to Mr Lloyd.
“Through my camera and the crowd, I couldn’t see exactly who asked it. I thought we were going to get the standard SCOTUS answer but nope, it went into more detail,” Mr Lloyd said.
One Twitter user wrote to Ms Donahue, “this was a trap question unless the context of the previous discussion led to it”.
“I started the question with ‘I’d actually like to follow up on that’. So yes, the context of the previous discussion led to it. I think it’s more than fair to ask politicians to define the issues they campaign on,” Ms Donahue said.
Ms Dixon said on Tuesday that she would be in favour of a state ban on “pornographic” books in schools. While she didn’t specify which books she wanted to be banned, she said she would “take a look” at the books to “make sure that we are not having children reading pornographic — or having a teacher read pornographic — material to a child in school”.
The gubernatorial candidate going up against Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer hosted the event to call for the resignation of state Superintendent Michael Rice to resign following the recent reveal of training videos concerning LGBT+ issues.
She spoke outside the Michigan Department of Education in the state capital of Lansing where she intensified her criticism of training videos which suggested that, in certain situations, it’s okay for teachers not to tell parents about their child’s sexual or gender orientation, Bridge Michigan reported.
Ms Dixon claimed that “radical political activists” have turned the state’s schools into “laboratories for social experiments”.
“This is not about LGBTQ issues. This is about protecting children, protecting parents’ rights and getting our schools back to the basics of teaching kids how to read and write,” she claimed.
The training videos have also been criticised by Ms Whitmer, whose administration said on Friday that the state education department should take measures to “continue bringing parents’ perspectives into the work you do”.
Mr Rice is pushing back on calls on removing the training videos, arguing that teachers should be careful about sharing a student’s sexual and gender orientation with parents if the child is worried that the revelation could prompt abuse, neglect, or even homelessness, according to Bridge Michigan.
In an op-ed in the outlet, published on Monday, Mr Rice wrote that schools in the state “are committed to strong partnerships with parents” but that “not all parents are supportive when they discover or are told that their child is gay or transgender”.
“If he does not think parents deserve to know what is happening with their child in our public schools that [taxpayers] are funding, he does not deserve a place at the table,” Ms Dixon said on Tuesday.
Michigan education department spokesperson Martin Ackley told Bridge Michigan that Mr Rice has “no plans on stepping down”.
Mr Ackley added that Mr Rice is “committed to working with parents and educators across the state to protect the health, well-being, and education of all Michigan students”.
