How Vindictive Of Them

Censorship is alive and growing in the Republican party, if anyone gets in their way they get run over. Through their hatred of anything LGBTQ+ knows no bounds.

When the town library wouldn't take down the LGBTQ+ books the voters defund the library.

Voters defund West Michigan library amid campaign against LGBTQ materials
Michigan Live
By Michael Kransz
August 5, 2022


Voters in a fast-growing West Michigan township on Tuesday defunded their public library amid a campaign against LGBTQ materials on the shelves.

Officials with Patmos Library in Jamestown Township say the library’s future is now uncertain after voters shot down the operating millage renewal [It appears that voters get to vote on renewing the towns departments budgets.] and increase on the Tuesday, Aug. 2, ballot.

Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told the Associated Press the library will lose 84% of its $245,000 annual budget following the failure of the millage question.

[…]

Voters shot down the millage question by a vote of 1,905 opposed to 1,142 in favor, or 62.5% to 37.5%, according to the unofficial count from the Ottawa County Clerk’s Office. It would’ve renewed and increased the millage of 0.4186 mills to 0.60 mills through 2032.

The library board is holding a meeting to decide what to do since they had almost all of their budget cut.

That is the problem with small towns, it is very sensitive to voter turnout. Only 3047 people voted out of about 9,630 residents.

“It was 100% about the cultural issue of having LGBT material in the library,” he said of the campaign. “As far as I can tell – I wasn’t necessarily super clued into everything that was going on in those discussions and that campaign – I never saw any opposition to the actual dollar amount or taxes.”

So now the town folks have no library, no puzzles to borrow for the children, no toys or games to borrow, no story telling for the children, no movies, or CDs. All because of a bunch of bigots and homophobes want to force their hatred on others.

They expect a new referendum on the library but now everyone in town knows of the vote and most don’t like it.

I never knew that our town was voted on in a referendum for a town indoor Olympic size swimming pool and I track town issues. With massive conglomerates and hedge funds buying up newspapers and laying off reporters there is no more town news, so I never learned of the vote on the pool.

I knew of the pool because of letters to the editor but their was no other news coverage on the referendum. I submitted a question to the mayor and never got a reply, my question was how much will the upkeep and staff cost a year? The pool was approved but out of 25,000 residents only 500 voted! And the vote was pretty much 50/50 vote with the pool winning by around a dozen votes.

Just like Jamestown Township a handful of residents with children on the swim team and their friends voted for the pool.

All politics are local and you just can’t no be interested… you have to get involved!

One morning you could wake up and find that the school board took down the non-discrimination policy or banned the LGBTQ+ student group or banned Critical Race Theory… or banned the LGBTQ+ books in the library!