Library Funding/Content Battle Rages on at County Supervisors Meeting

Once again, a now familiar non-agenda item dominated the Tuesday, September 5, Warren County Board of Supervisors meeting, both outside the Warren County Government Center (WCGC), where a pro-library contingent demonstrated for an hour or more prior to the open meeting’s 7 p.m. start, and inside the board meeting room which was filled to capacity leading to overflow into the hallway. That non-agenda item is the continued funding of Samuels Public Library amidst the public battle between mainly self-identified Catholic critics of the inclusion of LGBTQ-themed books in the library’s adult or children’s sections and supporters of continued funding of the library and the inclusion of such books in the library under increased parental control guidelines the library staff has been working to achieve.

For an hour to two prior to the 7 p.m. open meeting start, supporters of full library funding and maintaining diversified content made their case, including with signage like the ‘FREADOM’ spelling takes on one issue at hand and comment on the nature of love vs. hate. Inside, prior to the meeting’s start, a capacity crowd had gathered. Royal Examiner Photos Roger Bianchini

For detailed background on the public debate, we suggest visiting the Royal Examiner’s OPINION page, where both sides have stated their positions extensively in recent weeks. The public comments, again taking the maximum hour’s time allotted to non-agenda items, begin at the 6:15 mark of the County video linked below, concluding at the 1:06:45 mark.

Coincidentally, this revisiting of the library funding and management debate occurred the evening before the initial civil court hearing on a $5,000 defamation of character claim brought by Mark Egger, a principal figure in the CleanUp Samuels effort, against two members of the Save Samuels contingent. In fact, the two people targeted in Egger’s defamation claim, Stevi Hubbard and her daughter Cameron, were the 16th and 17th speakers of 19 at this meeting’s Public Comments, during which almost every speaker used their full three minutes of the allotted time.

This debate over public library function, operations, and funding has now not only garnered national attention, as pointed out by our contributing writer and retired AP (Associated Press) correspondent Malcolm Barr Sr.’s story on coverage in The Washington Post, but now also international scrutiny with a piece in Barr’s native England’s The Guardian, another newspaper of international readership.

Why all the attention?

Just after 7 p.m., the 5:30 p.m. closed session adjourned. Topics discussed were library funding options and EDA litigation. Could the county board be looking at additional legal fees related to a public library closing if the balance of the FY-2023/24 library budget isn’t released? Below, the board, with Jay Butler present remotely, faces a full house present for a non-agenda item.

It would seem Warren County’s elected officials’ handling and prospective handling of its public library’s funding and function in the wake of what appears to be a largely religious, faith-based criticism has attracted a worldwide audience as a pending decision on library funding — which was discussed with legal counsel in Closed/Executive Session prior to Tuesday’s open meeting — may now raise questions among a worldwide audience about the U.S. Constitution’s mandated separation of church and state in the conduct of U.S. governments at all levels.

Center stage in that upcoming political drama on the side seeking the removal of any book with a positive or supportive spin on LGBTQ lifestyles they see as “pornography” appears to be a significant portion who are Christendom College affiliated, both students and staff past and present, many also aligned with Front Royal’s St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (see more on that below in reference to Kelsey Lawrence’s comments).

St. John’s Church clergy contacted have distanced the church itself from some of its constituents’ commitment to the library content removal and defunding effort. Below, Clean Up Samuels speakers, one here at the podium and others awaiting their turn in the first seated row gave their names but not their religious affiliation.

Several consistent themes were heard from those “CleanUp” Samuels speakers. Among those were:

— Support of the board of supervisors taking control of the non-profit 501-c3 Samuels Public Library’s Board of Trustees, as was proposed in the County’s initially submitted revised Memorandum Of Agreement (MOA), also referenced as “the Funding Agreement.”

— “No taxation without representation” was another oft-quoted statement of the anti-Samuels as it currently exists contingent, reflecting their belief their tax dollars should not go to support something they don’t agree with.

A Nightmare Scenario

But if some themes were familiar, one speaker was not. Final Public Comments speaker Naomi Egger (1:03:40 video mark) seemed to summarize the darkest potential consequences of acceptance of the “T” (Trans) portion of the LGBTQ lifestyle. She quoted from a memoir about tragic physical consequences experienced by a young teen girl she cited as Chloe Kohl after her parents sought medical advice in the wake of their then 12-year-old daughter’s expression of sexual identity confusion as she reached puberty.

Final Public Comments speaker Naomi Egger gave an emotional presentation on the memoir of Chloe Kohl, a young teen whose expression of gender confusion at puberty led her parents to seek medical advice, leading to so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ between the ages of 12 and 15 from which she will suffer negative physical consequences, it would seem for the rest of her life. Library content or reading material, however, was not cited as a contributing factor to her experience.

Commenting on her sexual identity dilemma, that girl stated that she told her parents she “felt like a boy” but added in retrospect, “All I meant was that I hated puberty. That I wanted this new-found sexual attention to go away. That I looked up to my brothers a little more than I did to my sisters … (then) we all became victims of so-called gender-affirming care,” Egger quoted from Kohl’s memoir. That memoir continued to cite the negative physical consequences of first, “puberty blockers” at 12, and then at age 13 her first “testosterone injections”, and eventually a “double mastectomy” at 15, all leading to life-altering consequences it appears she will suffer from the balance of her life.

This nightmarish tale seemed to be more a condemnation of the medical industry’s reinforcement of trans-sexuality and its willingness to recommend and institute irreversible medical procedures on one so young than of library material normalizing alternate-sexual identity lifestyles. However, the underlying theme of alternate gender identity reinforcement was a connecting link. But it must also be noted that at no point in Ms. Egger’s presentation of the Chole Kohl memoir was reinforced by reading material, library or otherwise, referenced.

Expanding support & numbers games

But beyond the segment of the Catholic community that seems to be the dominant force in the Clean Up Samuels movement, we have also been made aware recently of a letter of support for the Clean Up Samuels initiative from five non-Catholic religious-affiliated individuals, including pastors from Browntown Baptist Church and Living Water Christian Church of the Shenandoah Valley; a “Bishop” with no church affiliation listed; a lay representative of the Shenandoah Christian Alliance; and one Islamic Imam of the Khatme Nubuwwat Center.

And while this now somewhat more diversified group claims to speak for a majority of this community, the opposing side has disputed that contention. In fact, when Stevi Hubbard addressed the board (55:05 County video mark, with her daughter following her at the podium), she unfurled what she said was a long social-media generated signature list of library supporters, some of whom she said while not showing up at meetings, will be motivated to vote in coming elections due to the board’s seeming siding with what they believe is a radical, religious minority of county residents. Queried later about that list she unfurled on the meeting room floor to the displeasure of Chairman Vicky Cook, Hubbard said that at the time of the supervisors meeting, it contained 4,111 signatures, 1,948 confirmed as county residents. By Friday, Hubbard said the total signature list had climbed to 5,461, though she did not have an updated number of verified county residents.

Stevi Hubbard, the 16th speaker and second of four from the Save Samuels side, despite their apparent physical majority present, was critical of the county’s elected officials for what she believes is board majority support for a minority initiative against a long-established and regionally respected municipally-contracted public library. And she offered the long sheet of signatures strewn out on the floor to her right, totaling over 4,000, nearly 2000 confirmed Warren County residents, as evidence of who is actually in the majority on this issue.

After the first 14 speakers were heard in support of the “CleanUp Samuels” effort — see more on a brewing sign-in controversy at this story’s end — the first speaker in support of the library’s material and full funding came to the microphone (51:47 video mark). That was Kelsey Lawrence, a  Save Samuels advocate and co-chair of the Warren County Chapter of Defense of Democracy. Lawrence addressed the numbers game she believes is being played by the defund and overturn control of library operations anti-LGBTQ contingent.

Lawrence opened her remarks with a quote attributed to World War II era German Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” That is her perception of the strategy being employed by the anti-library, anti-LGBTQ support materials contingent, a contingent she described as “93 far-right, radical extremists on a … maniacal mission to defend Samuels Public Library.”

The first speaker in support of the library’s existing management and content, Kelsey Lawrence, fact-checked the opposition as some of that opposition present stood in the first row behind her, it seemed not in support of her comments as those behind them were standing for, but to obscure the supervisors’ view of that expression of support behind them.

Then, further addressing the “majority” numbers the Clean Up Samuels (CUS) contingent cites, she told the supervisors, “First, CUS wants you to believe that they are the majority of library cardholders and voters in Warren County,” Lawrence began, adding this statistical analysis of un-cited origin, “A mere 33-percent of the county identifies as religious, I’m included in that, and only 7-percent as Catholic. St. John’s own pastor has claimed these people represent 1.5 percent of St. John’s parishioners. They represent less than half a percent of Warren County’s total population,” Lawrence told the supervisors. Royal Examiner could not verify St. John’s stats regarding the proportion of library activists among its congregation.

As to the “taxation without representation” argument of the Clean Up Samuels contingent, Lawrence said, “Lucky for them, they’re not,” explaining, “This claim too is based on a lie. County funds are not used to purchase library books. State funds and endowments are used for that.”

So, what do we find socio-politically on the Lawrence, Hubbard, and other Save Samuels supporters’ side? Judging from self-descriptions from letter writers to Royal Examiner’s Opinion page, among others contacted, it seems that group includes not only people identifying with that alternate sexual-identity lifestyle but also traditional heterosexuals, some even self-identifying as fundamentally conservative, who just don’t believe such an alternate sexuality lifestyle conducted with personal integrity, true love, and affection, condemns one to Hell. In fact, some observers of the current library book content debate have pointed out to this reporter that a softer tone on the spiritual fate of homosexuals appears to be the perspective of current Catholic Pope Francis. In 2013, shortly after assuming the papacy, when asked about the spiritual fate of those of a “gay” lifestyle, Pope Francis responded: “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?”

That group of pro-library county residents is urging the county’s elected officials to pull back from what appears to be threatened defunding and an attempt to gain appointed membership control of the independent 501 c3 non-profit Samuels Library Board of Trustees in order, they believe, to accommodate the religious-driven claims that any reference to alternate sexual lifestyles is “pornography” that must be removed from library shelves. Some have warned the supervisors of possible litigation to challenge such moves they see as religiously driven censorship in the conduct of the county government and its public library function.

Could we be on the verge of “EDA 2” as some have described potential financial paths the county government may have or be poised to follow? At least in the library case, it wouldn’t be stolen money but stolen rights of intellectual diversity and reading material access in the operations of a municipally contracted public library.

Stay tuned, sports – I mean court fans.

PS – Early sign ins?

One aspect of Tuesday’s Public Comments attracted the notice of several pro-library people who unsuccessfully tried to sign in to speak, one who said mid-afternoon, three to four hours prior to the open meeting’s start. The issue raised was that despite what appeared to be a significant majority of those present inside and outside the WCGC being supporters of the library’s full funding and operational independence, the first 14 of what ended up being a total of 19 Public Comments speakers who made it within the allotted hour were from the Clean Up Samuels Library (CSL) contingent. One of the pro-library groups said they were told a number of the anti-Samuels Library contingent had shown up at the WCGC as early as 9 a.m. that day. They wondered if those library opponents had been allowed to sign up to speak at that evening’s meeting as much as 9 to 10 hours prior to the meeting’s convening. It was not clear after speaking to several county officials whether that could have occurred with or without the county staff’s knowledge.

See the linked County video for the full public comments, as well as the post-public comments on regular meeting agenda topics. Among those agenda topics were approval of a Resolution on drought-related Warren County Disaster Relief to agricultural operations, a Rail Trail Letter of Support presented by County EDA Director Joe Petty, and a Financial Agreement with the Rivermont Volunteer Fire Department, Inc.

The concluding passage of the Disaster Relief Resolution states: “NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Warren County Board of Supervisors that the County Administrator is directed to make a formal request to the State FSA Executive Director Dr. Ronald Howell that Warren County be declared an agriculture disaster area and that any and all appropriate State and Federal disaster relief and assistance be made available to the farmers in Warren County.”

More signs were displayed outside the WCGC in the hours preceding the open meeting in support of the library and alternate sexual identity lifestyle content being available under parental supervision. Royal Examiner’s camera was there to video comments by some of those present, including in the final shot a U.S. military vet who recounted the negative impact of the imposition of a dictatorial, religiously based government in Iran, where he had been stationed prior to that government’s imposition.

Click here to watch the Warren County Board of Supervisors Meeting of September 5, 2023

Stevi Hubbard, Mark Egger Debate Public Roles as Egger’s $5,000 Defamation Suit Heads to Trial

Warren County Library At Crossroads: The Battle Over LGBTQ-Inclusive Literature Heats Up