Mississippi mayor withholds library funds over LGBTQ books
ABC News
The director of a Mississippi library system says a mayor is withholding $110,000 from his city’s library because LGBTQ books are on the shelves
RIDGELAND, Miss. -- The director of a Mississippi library system says a mayor is withholding $110,000 from his city’s library because LGBTQ books are on the shelves.
Tonja Johnson, executive director of the Madison County Library System, told news outlets that Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee received citizen complaints about a handful of books that depicted members of the LGBTQ community.
“Funding for this year was being withheld until we removed what he called ‘homosexual material’ from the library,” Johnson told WAPT-TV. “His reasoning that he gave was that, as a Christian, he could not support that, and that he would not release funding until we remove the material.”
The move is part of a larger trend of conservatives across the country trying to limit the type of books that children are exposed to. A Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Holocaust was recently banned by a Tennessee school district, while the Republican governors in South Carolina and Texas have called on superintendents to perform a systemic review of “inappropriate” materials in their states’ schools.
