A Kansas library was forced to remove all of its LGBTQ+ books aimed at young people in order to keep its lease.
For more than a year, the St. Marys branch of the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library has been fighting to retain the lease on a city-owned building where it has been located for decades. The library has faced opposition from St. Marys city commissioners, all five of whom have ties to an extremist Christian sect that wants to ban LGBTQ+ materials, according to the Kansas Reflector.
Related:
Although the city commission has no authority over the library, which is run by a board of trustees, it has attempted to leverage its lease agreement to control what materials are available on the shelves. Last year, St. Marys Mayor Matthew Childs, who also serves on the city commission, attempted to insert a renewal clause in the library’s lease requiring it to remove all LGBTQ+ and socially divisive books . The clause was dropped last December following public backlash.
Get the daily brief
The news that matters to you, reported by the people who care about you:
But city commissioners continued their crusade against the library. At a meeting in April, Commissioner Gerard Kleinsmith said his goal was to terminate the library’s lease due to the presence of LGBTQ+ books in its collection. “If they want to have their library, so be it. Go do it. Find another building to do it in,” Kleinsmith said, according to the Kansas Register. “I will never vote for taxpayer dollars, facilities, anything to be used in a place that harbors this kind of waste.”
An advisory committee was formed to evaluate the books in the St. Marys Library collection. About half of the committee’s six members have ties to the Society of St. Pius X, the extremist religious sect. The committee evaluated the books it identified by searching the library catalog for keywords such as “gay,” “transgender,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “queer.” About a dozen books were removed from the St. Marys junior collection and transferred to other branches.
“Most of these titles don’t really deal with LGBTQ topics or anything like that,” library director Judith Cremer said. “It’s simply describing a reality that is now normal for most people.”
Cremer said the adult section of the library still keeps some LGBTQ+ books.
The St. Mary’s City Commission renewed the library’s lease for another year at a Nov. 7 meeting.
Cremer said she was “not really proud” that the books were removed. “I feel bad because I think there should be a variety of things for everyone, but like I said, we have eight locations and I can get anything for anyone in about a day,” she said. “So that’s a compromise I have to make.”
“I’m just trying to be realistic that we’re in a precarious position here,” Cremer added.
Cremer said his priority is keeping the St. Marys library open. “We need to protect all of our areas of information, so that when people need that information to make decisions about their lives, we can have that information,” she said. “I know that and that’s what I’m striving for.” But I have to compromise to keep the doors open.
