Extremist Christians force library to remove LGBTQ+ books to keep its doors open

A library in Kansas has been forced to remove all of its youth-oriented LGBTQ+ books in order to keep its lease.

For over a year, the St. Marys branch of the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library has been fighting to retain its lease for 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 LGBTQ+ materials banned, according to the Kansas Reflector.

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The city commission could shut down the library because a commissioner believes “God makes you” a man or a woman.

While the city commission does not have authority over the library, which is managed by a board of trustees, it has attempted to leverage its lease agreement to control what materials are available on shelves. Last year, St. Marys mayor Matthew Childs, who also serves on the city commission, tried 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 after public backlash.

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But the city commissioners continued their crusade against the library. At an April meeting, Commissioner Gerard Kleinsmith said that his goal was to terminate the library’s lease due to 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 not ever vote for any taxpayer money, facilities, anything to be used anywhere that houses this kind of garbage.”

An advisory committee was assembled to evaluate books in the St. Marys library’s collection. About half of the six-person committee has ties to the Society of St. Pius X, the extremist religious sect. The committee evaluated books it identified by searching the library’s catalog for keywords like “gay,” “transgender,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “queer.” About a dozen books were removed from the junior collection at the St. Marys location and relocated to other branches.

“Most of these titles, the topic really isn’t LGBTQ or anything like that,” library director Judith Cremer said. “It’s just describing a reality that is normal now for most people.”

Cremer said that the library’s adult section still retains some LGBTQ+ books.

The St. Mary’s City Commission renewed the library’s lease for another year during a November 7 meeting.

Cremer said that she is “not real proud” that the books were removed. “I feel bad because I think that there should be a variety of things for everybody, but like I say, we do have eight locations and I can get anything for anybody within about a day,” she said. “So that’s a compromise I have to make.”

“I’m just trying to be realistic in the fact that we do have a precarious position here,” Cremer added.

Cremer said that her priority is keeping the library in St. Marys open. “We need to protect all of our areas of information, so that when people need that information to make decisions about their life, we have that information available,” she explained. “I know that and that’s what I’m striving for. But I do have to compromise to keep the doors open.”