Reports have arrived from Ridgeland, Mississippi, claiming that the director of a famous library circuit in the state has complained against the Mayor for withholding funding for his library. The Magnolia State resident has claimed Mayor Gene McGee has been withholding over 1,00,000 USD because his library had LGBTQ books on the shelves.
Mayor Gene McGee faces serious allegations from the library authority
The plaintiff is Tonja Johnson, executive director of the Madison County Library System. She has disclosed to the media that Ridgeland Mayor Rep. Gene McGee has issued a warning of sorts to clear out all the books from the shelves that talk about homosexuality. He claims to have received citizen complaints about some of the books because they depicted members of the LGBTQ community.
Johnson sat down with WAPT-TV for a tell-all interview where she said, “Funding for this year was being withheld until we removed what he called ‘homosexual material’ from the library.” She also claimed that the Mayor had pulled his support from the library because “as a Christian, he could not support that”. Johnson also said Mayor McGee has made it clear that funding would be approved only after they perform an LGBTQ book purge in their library.
Several US Politicians have joined in on the trend to restrict children’s book topics
Not just Mississippi Mayor Gene McGee, conservatives all across the country have taken part in the “trend” of disposing of LGBTQ books. This is being done to limit the children’s exposure to such sensitive topics. Recent reports also show that a Tennessee school district banned a Pulitzer award-winning book on the Holocaust because the authorities felt that it dealt with too serious a subject.
Republican governors of the states of South Carolina and Texas has also put up a review committee to go over all the “inappropriate” materials that are kept in a state school to get rid of literature on topics like LGBTQ, Holocaust, and other serious issues.
When the news of Mississippi Mayor Gene McGee holding up library funds got out, he did not provide so much of an official statement in reply to the complaints against him. He simply said he believes some of the books on the library’s shelves are not meant for children, in his opinion.
The money for the library that has not been paid to the authorities yet was approved by the Ridgeland Board of Aldermen during the city budget in the fall. Alderman Ken Heard has reiterated that the Mayor cannot hold up such funding for public libraries because he does not have any unilateral authority to do so.
Involved parties organized a meeting to go over the matter at Ridgeland’s library on Tuesday night. They had hosted Jason McCarty, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy group MS Capital City Pride, as well. He strongly advocated for the funding to be issued as soon as possible because children’s minds should not be molded by adults by limiting the exposure they should get to literature and other media.
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