After the Fremont County Library purposefully brought in numerous sexually obscene books, particularly to go in the young adult section, and refused to install content filters on its computers, activists started going to board meetings and reading graphic scenes from some of the books aloud.
MassResistance Field Director Arthur Schaper says concerned citizens across the country want porn filters and better policy that protects kids from explicit content. They also want obscene books removed from the youth and children's sections of their libraries, and they want to get rid of the American Library Association (ALA).
"You have these activist library directors that just want to push the ALA agenda," he laments. "They have no regard for the well-being of children. They don't care about the needs of kids, and we expose that."
But in Fremont County, which is a conservative county in a conservative state, many of the board members have been condescending and uninterested in what the conservative residents have had to say. So, Schaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
"We found out that the library director did not choose certain people in the county to be on the library board because they were – quote, unquote – 'ultra-conservative,'" he relays. "This is discriminatory, it's biased, [and] it's shameful."
Activists wound up contacting the Fremont County Republican Party Central Committee and filled them in on what was happening. The Commission then sent a "blistering" memo to the library board, saying in part that if these problems are not addressed, then they will be forced to remove the library board chair and place one of the commissioners on the board to ensure the concerns and policies are addressed.
Schaper credits this development to the repeated protests and pressure the Wyoming MassResistance chapter has applied on the public library board, though the organization really wants to focus on the schools, where kids are basically a captive audience there.
"There is something twisted and evil and just completely disgusting about anybody who doesn't want to remove obscenity, perversion, and LGBT promotion from libraries," Schaper says. "This is the latest culture war battleground, and we have to really break down the ALA, because they're the power behind the throne."
