Investigating the Reasons for the Book Ban Campaign

In the last few months, we’ve heard a lot of claims about alleged reasons for the aggressive recent campaign to remove LGBTQ+-themed books from Samuels Public Library. The most often repeated of these reasons is that there are “pornographic books in the children’s section,” a claim which is prominently plastered on the Clean Up Samuels website.

But is this really about graphic pornography and sexually explicit content in general? The forms submitted by Clean Up Samuels members would seem to contradict this, as they even denounce innocent picture books like “Bathe the Cat” for having an “LBGT agenda” simply because the main character’s parents are depicted as two loving male partners. (Spoiler: It’s a children’s picture book, the most explicit content is that the two dads are holding hands in one of the illustrations, which I’ve included with this post).

So what really started all of this outcry?

Let’s ask Thomas Hinnant, a Christendom alumnus who got a lot of press coverage in right-wing media outlets a few months ago while serving as a spokesperson for Clean Up Samuels, which calls itself a “leaderless, grassroots movement” in its press releases.

Hinnant was quoted by the Daily Caller, saying, “What started this whole thing off is an elderly woman, a grandmother had a couple of her grandchildren with her in ‘Samuels so-called Public Library’ and her grandson, four years old, walked into the aisle next to her and pulled out one of these sick books. … It’s indescribable what he pulled out, actually. That’s what brought this to folks’ attention. A bunch of us went into the library and discovered there were lots of, I don’t even want to call them books, but propaganda pieces with this pornography.”

Well, that certainly sounds bad. It’s a compelling story. And yet – that isn’t quite what happened, is it Thomas?

Interestingly, there were other, similar but slightly different versions of this story going around, including an email sent Feb. 1 by a concerned mother who claimed that her 4-year-old son picked up “Love, Violet” (a picture book about a little girl with a crush on her female classmate) from a library display, and she was horrified when he brought it to her to review, and she learned that books like this were “dispersed throughout the children’s books and they are not in a separate section.”

The truth, however, is that this campaign has been in the works for a long time, seemingly spearheaded by none other than Mark Egger, who appears to have an obsession with targeting queer people – most recently delivering an extremely graphic, transphobic rant at the recent BOS public hearing on Aug. 15, and having previously been involved in a similarly ideological and virulent campaign against the adoption of anti-discrimination policies for trans youth in Warren County Public Schools.

Egger was joined in this latest effort by fellow St. John’s parishioners Jane Elliot, Isaac, and Julia Easton.

The timeline

JAN/FEB

Egger sent an email to Jane Elliot on Jan. 29, 2023, with the subject line “Pervert books at the library,” in which he says, “Remember that I am only including books for kids that are promoting homosexuality and/or boys becoming girls and girls becoming boys. … I am not including any other books that might have other issues someone might not like – I’m only including the ones that are proselytizing our children into homosexuality or mental illness (so-called transgender).”

Also, on January 29th, an email went out with the subject line “Samuels Library is NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY. WARNING!”. This email described books at the library which were “promoting the ‘alternative lifestyle'” and included a list with titles such as “Love, Violet,” “I Love You Because I Love You”, “Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle” and similar – while also engaging in casual bigotry towards members of the homeless community.

Tom McFadden Sr. sent an email to Jane Elliot the next day (Jan. 30, 2023) with the subject “Fwd: pervert books at the Library” (and cc’d his entire “nonpartisan” political email list, the Front Royal Catholics Civic Engagement Group). In this email, he says, “these books promote sexual fetishes [by which he means expressions of queer identity, as is clear from context in this email as well as other emails sent by him with similar language]. … If it is contrary to your culture, say so!”

An email sent from a different source on Jan. 31 to a private women’s mailing list said: “thank you to all who put together this list of objectionable books. … The LGBTQ+ has a very intentional agenda which they call ‘grooming of the next generation’ into homosexuality and transgenderism.”

On Feb. 1, the previously mentioned email describing how the author’s son found “Love, Violet” on a bookshelf was sent *in response* to that message about the LGBTQ+’s “intentional agenda”, and we can see that the campaign was well underway by this point, as Egger had already compiled this initial list of titles he took issue with.

In response to that Feb. 1 email, Jane Elliot sent a response in which she stated, “Attached is a list of forty-nine (49) — hardly a few — problem young children’s books at Samuels. Most of the list has been put together by Mark Egger.”

APR/MAY

On April 23, McFadden’s email list received an email titled “Bad library books – Supervisors could help”. In this email, it is stated that “a team of 3 Front Royal Catholics have been working together for about 2 months to bring about change”, and refers to the author’s distaste for the “filth” in the library, which he describes as “sexualy (sic)-explicit and gender dysfunctional material in its children’s and juveniles sections.”

It goes on to state that “the Catholic team has been working with the Library Board and with two members of the Board of Supervisors but has not yet made a breakthrough. … Warren County’s organized Christian parents may have to call upon our elected representatives to make sure the library’s standards are changed to Warren County’s ‘community standards.’ This is another example of why Shenandoah District residents need to vote for a Supervisor candidate who is pro-family on May 5th.”

This email did not specify who those two BOS members he mentioned were. However, a later email sent by the moderators of the Front Royal Catholics Civics Education Group (one of whom is Tom McFadden Sr.) stated that Jay Butler (who submitted his own removal forms and stated on the forms that it was on behalf of the Board of Supervisors), and Vicky Cook (who is involved with the Moms For Liberty chapter founded by Leslie Mathews) had both attended the “Beer, Babysitting and Cleaning Up Samuels Library” event on May 13th, as did Richard Jamieson, unopposed candidate for Delores Oates’ soon-to-be-vacated North River District Supervisor seat (when she makes her run for state senate in the Nov. election).

This email update also received a reply from another St. John’s parishioner, Elizabeth Poel, who thanked Tom Sr. for the update, stating, “the queer rot is suffocating.”

On May 20th, another email went out with a message from Isaac Easton, in which he says, “In our forms [filled out at the event on May 13th], we focused on the whole gamut of child grooming – porn, LGB, trans, etc. This was great, and it’s important to hit all of these issues because we want them all gotten rid of. That said, when making our case to the broader public, we want to focus exclusively on graphic porn being available to children. It’s our most winnable argument. To that end, we need you guys to write letters too that say we don’t want pornography in the Samuels Library children’s section.”

Isaac also provides an example of such a letter and asks that people send their drafts to him to review before submitting them to the editor. He finishes with: “NOTICE how the attached letter doesn’t highlight anything about the scene being LGBT.”

Tom Sr.’s list receives another email on May 26 with the subject line “Don’t let June be taken over by the perverts and atheists”. The author says the Library Board and staff have “responded with arrogance to our efforts to clean out the ‘literature’ which promotes unnatural sex to children.” It goes on to say that “we do not suggest defunding the Library but, rather, cutting its funding to the point where its management will have to choose between adopting community standards or looking for another job.”

This email also states that “At least 4 of the 5 members of the Board of Supervisors are known to be sympathetic to our clean-up campaign. If scores of us show up at the public hearing on the County’s budget and demand reform, it will give them cover to act boldly.” The email ends with a call to action to attend the BOS meeting on June 6th, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Another email went out to the Front Royal Catholics mailing list on May 31st, urging people to write to the BOS. This email stated, “What we object to is having the tax money we pay … being spent by the Library to purchase and display books that offend natural law simply because some minuscule number of LGBTQ adults or others (including the Library’s management) want our children exposed to that ‘lifestyle’.”

JUN/JUL

In July, the Clean Up Samuels group held another form submission event (+BBQ), and submitted another round of forms containing appalling homophobic and transphobic language. Tom Sr. sent out an email afterward that described the event as “We filled out forms objecting to the counter-culture (transgender) books.”

So here we are — It’s mid-August, and they are claiming that we are being disingenuous to state that this group is doing all of this to remove LGBTQ+ representation from the public library. In fact, they are actively trying to pivot their messaging (see Richard Jamieson’s latest letter to the BOS and recent letter to the editor) to focus less on the content of the books at all and more on financial data alongside a claim to speak for all Republicans, stating that theirs are majority views due to Warren County party affiliation demographics (I know quite a few local Republicans who would be unhappy to see these people speak for them, but that’s a topic for another time).

But I think it’s safe to say that to those in the know, they have made it supremely clear what their agenda is from square one: the erasure of LGBTQ+ representation from the public square. Luckily there are more people in this community who love their LGBTQ+ neighbors than there are bigots who hate them. As long as the people of Warren County who care about freedom of speech and diverse representation continue to show up and speak out, this group may win a few battles, but they will not win the war.

Bridget Randolph
Brooklyn, New York
(longtime county resident, age 5-22, and CC graduate)

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