The woman, her name was Sally, whose classroom had been just a few doors down the hall from mine, and who had been teaching Advance Placement Government, a class that was supposed to explain how our democratic system worked and, perhaps, interest students in a life of public service, was an extremely religious and conservative person who had won her race t be a state representative, with the heavy help of the evangelical vote.

It did not take students long each year to realize that even though an assignment called for the expressing of views on certain political and current events topics, the closer the report was to the conservative argument for or against any subject, the higher the grade; the opposite holding true for a more liberal stand point. Her classes usually dwindled over any given year as students chose not to be proselytized either religiously or politically.

As she once emailed a student,

“I have always let my religious beliefs run my teaching styles and choicest.  And, yes, I am letting them run my politics, too.”

According to her website, her speeches, and simple conversations, no major decision in her life was ever made by her, but had been a direct instruction from God. She justified every decision, every action, and every proposal by saying God had spoken to her.

Although God never spoke to the woman who was to be the Mother of His Son about her impending impregnation, choosing, instead, to send an emissary, He seemingly had given into the Yenta side of his Jewish-ness by personally running this woman’s life, telling her to have babies and stay home to raise them; to get into teaching when they were grown so He could be brought back to the public schools; and, having accomplished everything up to that point, but not being in a position to change public education from the classroom, run for the state legislature to accomplish this.

When she began her time in the legislature she needed to come out of the clichéd gate running and find her motivation, her mission.

She introduced her first mission by telling the story of an event that she said had happened locally, even though in every place the attempt to ban a particular book was made, such places as North Carolina, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, the story was the same:

Two parents picked up their children whom they had left at the library unattended, and on the way home asked what books they had gotten. One of the children began to read from a book, King and King, the story of a prince whose mother, while attempting to marry him off to a princess, found he was actually in love with another prince and had no problem with it.

After almost hitting a tree and potentially killing their own children in their horror, the parents called the new representative who then demanded that, as the public library was tax funded, this book be removed from all libraries, or those offending libraries which refused to do this would be denied funding from the state.

The bad parenting skills of the parents who simply dropped their children, as young as six, off at a library unsupervised in a day in age when children were being abducted, or could be, was obvious. They had not supervised their children, nor helped them pick books out of the library that they intended to read at home, and, upon seeing their own failing, attempted to blind others to it by distraction.

Their obvious failure was somehow lost to the expediency of the moment.

Attracting some very disturbingly conservative people, the legislator went to a Metro Library Commission meeting demanding any books with a “Homosexual Theme”, or which might have spoken of Homosexuality as anything other than an abomination, be removed from the system. Her assumption, apparently, was that as a legislator she would speak, they would listen, and there would be no question. I do not think she was aware that people would object to her attempted use of power, or that her wishes would not be so automatically obeyed.

A group of people including people from the ACLU, local Gay organizations, library workers, and concerned citizens, myself included, went to the same meeting to argue that parents, after instilling in their children their own family values, should view what their children intend to read before they check out a book at any library, rather than demand that if they found something objectionable no one should be allowed to read it.

I felt a little naked at that first of many meetings when, in attempting to prove her action was not based on bigotry, but a concern for children, the legislator tried that old chestnut that she only objected to certain things of a “homosexual nature”, but she herself loved Gay people and knew many, and even worked with some very fine teachers who happened to be Gay. While making that last statement she swept her left arm in an all inclusive arcing motion ending the arc with her finger pointing directly at me declaring that I was a wonderful teacher with whom she had no problem.

Although she knew I was open at school, she took the liberty, or acted on the assumption that there would be no harm in using me and my sexual orientation in so public a manner in the capitol city of the Buckle of the Bible Belt

The commission was to take things under advisement, or avoidance if you will, and hold a few more meetings before any decision was made.

The press was mixed in their reaction to her move, but most often questioned it. Although the media tried mightily to report in a balanced, neutral way, some of her statements which bordered on fanaticism came across that way. As the meetings progressed and the foolishness of her demand became more and more apparent, she modified her demand from removing the books totally from libraries to placing them in a restricted area for books that were controversial in nature without actually describing who would do this, or on what it would be based.
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The commission, for its part, knowing that as libraries are funded by all tax payers, was reluctant to choose and place books apart solely on the opinions and desires of any one group. Even the Bible had its unsavory parts, and fairy tales were rife with negative references to step-mothers that would certainly offend those families that had one. It was conceivable that quite a few unintended books with anything anyone might find objectionable would be put in a totally separate place apart from the other books. There just wasn‘t enough space in any library to accommodate all the separate sections that all the books that might need to be moved would require.

There were rallies in front of libraries, interviews in the various media, and a presence at all Library Commission meetings.

Wherever the legislator went with her message, people from the other side of the argument were there pointing out that if any parent did not want his or her child to read something it was up to them to establish limits within their family and be with the child at the library when they were choosing books. It was wrong for someone to force their own personal family values on others by deciding what other people’s children should be able to read.

The final compromise of the Library Commission to the legislator‘s demand was far from a total seclusion of these books in a separate room. They were to be placed on an easily findable shelf, but separated from other books. Instead of the desired effect of making them hard to find, these so called controversial books were made more easy to find because they were on a separate shelf in a section of the main library, and not mixed with other books where they would have blended in, just as the enticing bawdy magazines separated from sport and news magazines in a newspaper store are made easier to find.

Her greatest threat of withholding public funds from non-cooperating libraries was shot down in the state legislature, and the matter died.

Where I live now, the library scheduled a Drag Queen Story Hour at which a Drag ueen reads a children’s book to those in attendance. Let me rephrase that, those who choose to be in attendance.

Immediately some adults began assigning to their children whatever hang-ups they might have.

While children will simply see a woman, perhaps a gorgeous one, a grandmotherly one, or one that favors a more comical clownish look, reading them a book, some parents have gotten all upset about gender confusion issues, and are expressing vociferous protests.

Assuming their children will look beyond appearance and begin pondering adult concerns, and will ask questions the parents are uncomfortable answering, these parents are oblivious to the reality that while the children might have questions, their loud protests with signs will generate questions.

The assumption apparently is that the children will be sequestered in a room with no parents present while the reader puts on a show complete with lip-synching popular songs and shouting out adult oriented jokes.

The reality is that someone is simply reading a book to children and their parents or guardians, something not many people do.

Why is it the adults, while claiming to be on the moral high road, immediately think of the most irrelevant immoral things?

What will they do when they hear a Catholic priest might do a reading?

And where do they stand on the annual practice held from Thanksgiving to Christmas of having a total stranger wearing a disguise sitting openly in a crowded mall seating their children on his lap?

I’d be more concerned with the possibility of inappropriate touching in the Santa scenario than a Drag Queen sitting on her own chair in front of a group of adult accompanied children where a book is being read without any touching involved.

Like with the legislator and her attempted censorship, those who object need to accept that people who have no objection to a Drag Queen reading to children, and may see some value in it, are taxpayers who support the library.

As with any public things that are optional and not compulsory, if someone does not want their child read to by a Drag Queen, don’t attend, but let those of a different mindset attend something they see value in and support with taxes.

I foresee a future protest by those who fear them, objecting when a clown, a pirate, a policeman, or a priest reads to children at the library.