


The New Jersey mother who found herself under investigation by the U.S. military, Homeland Security, and local police for social media posts objecting to an LGBT-sexually themed poster hung at her local elementary school, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the matter.
Angela Reading, the mother of two young children, names seven U.S. military officials in the suit including the commander of the McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a joint military base located near Reading’s home.
It is the only joint base in the U.S. Department of Defense that includes units for all six branches of the U.S. armed forces.
North Hanover Township School Superintendent Helen Payne and the town’s Police Chief Robert Duff are also named in the suit, which was filed on Mar. 15 in the Camden division of New Jersey’s U.S. District Court.
The suit charges that the military officials together with Duff, Payne, and other town officials conspired to harass and intimidate Reading in retaliation for comments she made in a private Facebook group that a poster made by 4th–6th graders was inappropriate.
“For no reason other than that they detested her constitutionally protected expression of her point of view on an issue of public concern, defendants abused the power of governmental offices to censor Mrs. Reading’s speech and retaliate against her with a campaign of smears, lies, and referrals to assorted law enforcement agencies for investigation as a “threat,” using the instrumentalities and tools of their official positions to create a public fury specifically directed against Mrs. Reading,” the lawsuit alleges.
The Joint Base, Payne, and Duff did not return numerous phone calls and emails from The Epoch Times about the allegations against them.
Chris Ferrara, an attorney with the Thomas More Society which is representing Reading in the civil rights suit, told The Epoch Times that a chain of exchanged emails and other internal documents and correspondence obtained for the lawsuit, clearly show that Reading was targeted for what he referred to as an “innocuous” Facebook post.
Copies of the documents were provided to The Epoch Times.
One of them reads “I think we need to keep the pressure on until her disruptive and dangerous actions cease, so please share any historical items to help us shape our messaging for those not aware and ones like myself that moved here recently.”
It was written by Maj. Chris Schilling, an Army Reserve officer from the joint base.
Schilling, who is named in Reading’s lawsuit, identified himself in his emails to others against Reading’s post, as a member of a group called No Place For Hate. He appears to have instigated the protest against Reading.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Megan Hall, also a Deputy Commander of the 87th Security Forces Squadron, calls Reading an “extremist” in one of her emails and writes, “Furthermore, Ms. Angela Reading encouraged people of like-mindedness to attend the monthly BOE meetings and express the same viewpoint.”
BOE stands for Board of Education.
“This really gets under my skin for sure,” wrote Joseph Vazquez, a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force, in the exchanges of emails. Both Hall and Vasquez are also named defendants in Reading’s civil rights lawsuit.
Vazquez also stated that he had referred Reading’s posts to the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations Intelligence Center, which he stated: “keep an eye on far right/hate groups.”
The documents show that Payne and Duff, originally only copied on the emails, began making their own comments against Reading.
In one of his emails, Duff stated that the North Hanover police were working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and military officials “concerning Mrs. Reading.”
“We have a government that is surveilling law-abiding citizens because their opinions amount to what they consider to be thought crimes,” said Ferrara who likened Reading’s case to “stochastic terrorism.”
The term has mostly been used by the liberal media to describe the Jan. 6 protests. It is generally defined as using influential words to incite violence.
But Ferrara said in reality it is the left practicing stochastic terrorism, by using its influences to incite violence against conservatives like Reading.
“If you depart from any of the official narratives on any subject these days, the federal government will put you on a list to surveil you and take action against you,” he said, “that’s what’s happening.”
Reading’s post, which can be read here in its entirety on a petition started in support of Reading, was posted to a private Facebook page made up of Christian conservative parents.
In it, Reading says her 7-year-old daughter asked her what “polysexual means” after reading from a poster hung outside of math night at the local elementary school.
The post included a range of other LGBT terms including pansexual, genderqueer, transgender, gender fluid, and several others.
“Why are elementary schools promoting/allowing elementary kids to research topics of sexuality and create posters,” Reading wrote in the Facebook post.
“This is not in the state elementary standards [law] nor in the BOE-approved curriculum.”
Reading went on to write, “It’s perverse and should be illegal to expose my kids to sexual content.”
She also posed the question in the post, “how can my young children be accepting of people who are sexually attracted to multiple genders? They don’t even know what sex is! Are adults talking about their sexual life with my kids and looking for affirmation?”
In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, Reading said that what she hopes to accomplish with the lawsuit is to help encourage parents who are feeling bullied into silence to speak out.
“I have so much support behind the scenes, but I’m riding into battle alone,” said Reading, “if we had a whole group of parents speaking out, I don’t think this would be happening.”