A Wyoming library director was fired two years ago over an uproar over books with sexual content and LGBTQ+ themes. The books were in the children’s library. The librarian will receive $700,000 after settling a lawsuit. The push for these books to remain in the children’s library was backed in part by LGBT groups.
Parents only asked that the books be moved from the children’s section.
People complained that the books were inappropriate for young people and sought their removal from youth shelves.
PRIDE And Porn
It came to a head when the library highlighted LGBTQ books to mark Pride Month in the children’s section.
Among the books in the children’s section were Lawn Boy, Gender Queer, This Book Is Gay, Sex Is a Funny Word, and Dating and Sex, a guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy.
Some of the books have graphic drawings of copulation. How to Make a Baby is one of those books. It has cute graphic scenes of the complete sex act in detail.
According to most newspapers, including The Independent, the NY Times, HuffPo, Lesley sued last spring over her termination and reached the settlement with county officials Wednesday. Only she didn’t.
“I do feel vindicated. It’s been a rough road, but I will never regret standing up for the First Amendment,” she said. She thinks she’s brave, a knight fighting for sex guides for nine-year olds.
She justified her specious First Amendment claim this way: “If you segregate these books, say in the adult section, and you’re a teenager, and you go to try to find something on a topic, and that book isn’t there, you won’t discover it.”
So, teens never leave the children’s library?
She shouldn’t feel vindicated. The settlement as they describe it came from their insurance because the company didn’t want the expense of a protracted trial.
She Wasn’t Vindicated
The NY Times wrote that a county official said that when Ms. Lesley brought suit, a claim was filed with Campbell County’s insurance company. The county didn’t settle, the insurance company surrendered.
“While the county did not comment on the settlement, a lawyer for the insurance company said that the county had settled early before an expensive federal trial.”
The lawyer emphasized that there was no admission of fault, and that this was the “ least inconvenient manner to end the suit.”
She didn’t win a thing.
“I don’t regret standing up for the First Amendment in any way, but it was kind of a brutal process,” Lesley said. She’s courageous and gallant or something. I wonder if she censors conservative books or puts them where they can’t be seen.
Did George Washington want pornographic books in children’s libraries?
All the residents wanted was for the books to be moved to a different part of the library, and she refused.
