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Critical Error in Judgment by Library’s Leadership

My 11-year-old daughter recently went to the Craighead County library with her grandmother. When she came home, she described the library’s current display promoting gay and transexual pride – in the children’s area.

One book my daughter described was the GayBCs, which the publisher describes as being for the target age of 4 to 8 years old. In this book, children sashay out of the closets and present “Q” is for “Queer.” Under “P,” it explains pansexualism to children.

The GayBCs and a book on RuPaul for children promoting drag to them, which should be noted is inherently sexual and is always a demeaning caricature of women. We need to remember that it is wrong to caricature any group of people – just as it was wrong for white people to caricature African Americans during the era of inappropriate “blackface” entertainment.

Another picture book for young children teaches children that when babies are born, we just have to guess whether they are boys or girls. This book’s assertion is that gender is based on whether a person feels, acts or dresses like a boy or a girl and reinforces the gender stereotypes that have been particularly harmful to women, presenting the picture that all true girls will want to twirl around in pink dresses.

Children are also told they might be a boy, a girl, “both a boy and a girl” or “neither a boy nor a girl.” The book further explains that a child’s gender identity can always be changing.

That is a whole lot of confusion to introduce into children, who are encouraged to explore what their own gender identity might be – like it is a harmless game of imagination. Science and biology are left out of the equation, and gender is presented to children like something they have to make a decision about for themselves.

Further examples of the books on display and promoted by library employees in the children’s section include a book for adults to train children to become LGBT activists, which library employees seem to have taken to heart in using taxpayer dollars to do just that.

A poster explains all the different pride flags to children, explaining bisexualism, pansexualism, transgenderism, and gender fluidity to children.

What if a parent thought a child was too young to be introduced to pansexualism? No worries – library employees have made that decision for you, and one trip to the library with your child renders your parental judgment on the timing of these tough conversations moot. Thus, library employees usurp the role of parents when the library should instead be a safe place for children that parents can trust.

Some say we don’t need to “censor” the children’s library section, but that is exactly what a children’s section is – a curated collection of books appropriate for children. Many books and other things are always left out of children’s sections because they are inappropriate for children. Similarly, the library’s display highlighting drag culture and its poster describing pansexualism should have been left out of the children’s section.

Displaying 33 books on aspects of sexuality to young children is entirely inappropriate and a critical error in judgment on the part of library leadership. The library, funded by all of us as taxpayers, has no business allowing employees to advocate their personal political views on sexuality to young children. It is apparent that library employees have an agenda – and they don’t mind to harness your taxpayer dollars to drive it.

Similarly, we shouldn’t have library displays for children promoting a variety of heterosexual relationships or explanations for children of polyamory, abortion, etc. Some discussions should be the domain of parents, and “diversity” is not an excuse for indoctrination. Children should be reading quality literature – not being propagandized by library employees and authors attempting to social engineer them into becoming little LGBT activists.

We are losing something very precious indeed. The purity, innocence and beauty of children should be guarded – not harnessed and exploited for political reasons. We should let kids be kids.

By Stephanie Nichols

Stephanie Nichols is a local attorney, guest columnist for The Jonesboro Sun, and Craighead County resident.

This article first appeared HERE.

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