Submitted by Mipro Rachel | ST. MARYS, Kansas Gerard Kleinsmith claims to detest the concept of repression.
He doesn’t like books about transgender people, so all he wants to do is cancel the contract for the state’s public library.
As a capital director, he believes it is his responsibility to get rid of transgender content, or “garbage,” as the term is used. In a meeting of the city commission, Kleinsmith emphasized that “God doesn’t make mistakes” and his conviction that people cannot change genders, saying that removing the library was part of his duties as mayor.
Kleinsmith stated, “My objective is to end the contract with the library.” “So be it if they want to have their catalog.” Go ahead and complete it. I can’t stop myself from finding another building to do it in. Although I don’t intend to stop that, I will never vote for any taxpayer funds, amenities, or other items to be used anywhere that house this kind of trash.
The different members of St. Marys’ five-person city fee, a strongly religious organization that attends the Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX—an intense spiritual sect that split from the Catholic church—support him in this position. The commission have previously stated at conferences that their religious affiliation has an impact on their opinions.
During a city commission debate about transgender publications and the general public, director Richard Binsfeld said, “Some things are wrong.” You would look at it and ask, “Why do we possess it?” if you lived up to your values and stood by them at all.
Local authorities have been keeping an eye on the public library for decades, and it just escaped a lease termination attempt at the end of next year. According to catalog producer Judith Cremer, she and her staff are attempting to cooperate with the commission while adhering to public library law.
She is still unsure of the commissioners’ recent decision to criticize the collection, which had been running without a hitch in its St. Marys area for decades. Since 2003, Cremer has held this position, which was uncontested up until last year.
The lease agreement is the only utilize they have appeared to be able to find because we are not a part of the city construction, according to Cremer. “They seem to be going down that road, which I’m disappointed with because we’ve also been around doing our jobs, attempting to help people, and trying to accomplish summer reading. I feel like it’s a misinterpretation of who we are.” We have adhered to the rules and are trying to do our work.
The Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library would be forced to relocate if the lease isn’t renewed, giving up a community space it has held for decades and depriving St. Marys residents of easily accessible library material, even though commissioners have no governing influence over the library.
Since the 1980s, the collection has resided in St. Marys and is leased to the city on an annual basis. Eight areas, including Alma, Alta Vista, Eskridge, Harveyville, Olsburg, Onaga, St. Marys, and Westmoreland, have the library as their administrative center. County people pay taxes to support this collection.
The school’s operations are overseen by an eight-member board of trustees, with Pottawatomie and Wabaunsee County commission appointing individuals to the table for four-year terms. Board selections are not influenced by the committee.
In an effort to tackle group concerns with library materials, the library established an advisory group, but attempts at reconciliation have been ineffective.
The collection refused to accept a renewal clause requesting the removal of all Gay and socially divisive ebooks from the shelves, which prompted discussion of the school’s lease renewal next year. The contract was extended for a year by the commission in December in response to strong public pressure.
Despite national legal safeguards for public libraries, area commissioners have since redoubled their battle against LGBTQ books.
Kleinsmith was furious with the text “Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition,” a transgender teen coming-of-age tale, at the April town committee meeting.
“This writer is wholly mistaken. God does not err, according to Kleinsmith. God is incapable of making a blunder. We’re all capable of errors. Mankind is capable of making mistakes. God is incapable of error. I’ll exert every effort to combat this waste.
You are a man if God makes you one, he continued. You are a woman no matter what if God makes you one.
The anti-LGBT renewal provision was created by St. Marys Mayor Matthew Childs last year, and he stated during the April conference that the library’s contents had once more affected the commission decision to maintain the lease.
Transgender books shouldn’t be kept in libraries. The elephant in the room, according to Childs, is that we don’t want the library to be promoting particular kinds of content. Do we want to maintain
it at all if the library is, we return to the original query?
City officials should keep in mind legal protections, according to Sharon Brett, lawful director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, which advised commissioners to abandon their attempts at repression during the initial lease renewal conversation.
According to Brett, “every part of the committee should keep in mind that their personal discomfort with a particular book does not justify limiting its accessibility to everyone else in the community.” Not only is this censoring conservative, but it also has implications for how our First Amendment is understood in its most basic form. We implore the fee to keep in mind their duties under the Constitution.
Cremer claimed that she and the collection board had made every effort to work with the percentage and anxious residents.
Cremer stated, “We’re offering services to the community.” “We’re looking after the same people.” There shouldn’t be a problem, in my opinion.
She asked the commissioners to speak with libraries staff directly about their concerns after the April percentage meeting because they had a procedure in place to evaluate book complaints.
Staff members of the library are also taking part in the expert committee. According to Cremer, the library regularly updates the city percentage on its work as well as that of the expert committee.
However, she continues to draw criticism from the local clergy, including during a controversial collection board meeting on June 28 that Binsfeld and other St. Marys citizens attended.
We want to see all LGBTQ+ press, including audio files, videos, books, actions, etc., as we go along. In a letter to libraries board members, resident Stephen Murtha requested that all minors be barred from this branch and from having access to anything through it, including online ordering and inter-library loans.
According to Murtha, the library ought to represent the majority of Christians in the neighborhood.
Cremer claimed that most of these complaints came from a small portion of the population and that she hasn’t encountered any issues or complaints from the majority of library patrons.
But she worries about the library’s coming.
Even though that anxiety and controversy has been considerable, we have continued, Cremer said. “My team and I have continued to offer those services in the same way that we always must because it’s not the people we’re serving who are at fault, but they are the people who will be losing,” said the author.
