Again highly religious fundamentalists got into positions of authority and are pushing their religious beliefs on the entire community. Gerard Kleinsmith says he doesn’t like books about transgender people, he calls it garbage and feels it is his duty to remove all such books because god doesn’t make mistakes! Think on that, other religious sects say it is OK that god created transgender people, yet their beliefs don’t matter, just his. He is supported in this stance by the other members of St. Marys’ five-person city commission, a heavily religious group that attends the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, an extreme religious sect that broke away from the Catholic church. Hugs
City commissioners says they don’t want ‘garbage’ on the public library’s shelves
BY: RACHEL MIPRO – JULY 11, 2023 12:12 PM
St. Marys city commissioners have taken offense with a transgender book in the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library. (Rachel Mipro/Kansas Reflector)
ST. MARYS — Gerard Kleinsmith says he hates the idea of censorship.
He just wants to pull the lease for the city’s public library because he doesn’t like books about transgender people.
As a city commissioner, he feels it is his duty to remove transgender content — “garbage,” as he refers to it. Kleinsmith said during a city commission meeting that removing the library was part of his job as a city official, emphasizing “God doesn’t make mistakes,” and his belief that people can’t change genders.
“My goal is to terminate the lease with the library,” Kleinsmith said. “If they want to have their library, so be it. Go do it. Find another building to do it in, I can’t stop that. My intention is not to stop that, but I will not ever vote for any taxpayer money, facilities, anything to be used anywhere that houses this kind of garbage.”
He is supported in this stance by the other members of St. Marys’ five-person city commission, a heavily religious group that attends the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, an extreme religious sect that broke away from the Catholic church. The commissioners have said at previous meetings that their views are influenced by their religious affiliation.
“Some things are wrong,” said commissioner Richard Binsfeld, during a city commission discussion about transgender books and the transgender community at large. “If you live up to your morals, if you stand by your morals at all, you’d look at it and say, ‘Why do we have it?’”
The public library has been under scrutiny from local officials for months, narrowly surviving an attempt to pull the lease at the end of last year. Library director Judith Cremer said she and her staff were trying to work with the commissioners while remaining in accordance with legal guidelines for public libraries.
She’s still not sure why the commissioners have taken issue with the library in recent months when it had operated in its St. Marys location for decades without problems. Cremer has held her position since 2003, and until last year, this was a position without controversy.
“We’re not part of the city structure and the lease agreement is the only leverage that they have seemed to be able to find,” Cremer said. “They seem to be continuing down that road, which I’m disappointed with because we have still been here doing our job, trying to help people, trying to do summer reading, and I feel like it’s a misunderstanding of who we are. We are trying to do our job and we have followed the rules.”
While commissioners have no governing influence over the library, the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library would be forced to shift locations if the lease isn’t renewed, giving up a community spot it has held for decades and depriving St. Marys residents of easily accessible library material.
The library has been housed in St. Marys since the 1980s, operating on an annual lease with the city. The library acts as the headquarters for eight locations, including Alma, Alta Vista, Eskridge, Harveyville, Olsburg, Onaga, St. Marys and Westmoreland, with county residents funding the library through taxes.
An eight-member board of trustees provides oversight of the library’s operations, with Pottawatomie and Wabaunsee County commissioners appointing members to the board to serve four-year terms. The commission doesn’t have influence over board decisions.
The library formed an advisory group in an attempt to address community concerns with library materials, but efforts toward reconciliation have been unsuccessful.
The library’s lease renewal came up for debate last year because the library refused to accept a renewal clause asking for the removal of all LGBTQ and socially divisive books from the shelves. Facing intense public pressure, the commission in December renewed the lease for one year.
Now, city commissioners have renewed their campaign against LGBTQ books, despite federal legal protections for public libraries.
During the April city commission meeting, Kleinsmith raged against the book “Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition,” a coming of age story about a transgender teenager.
“This author is absolutely wrong. God does not make mistakes,” Kleinsmith said. “God cannot make a mistake. We can make mistakes. Mankind can make a mistake. God cannot make a mistake. … I will do everything I can to fight this kind of garbage.”
“If God makes you as a male, you are a male,” he added. “If God makes you a female, you are a female, no matter what.”
St. Marys Mayor Matthew Childs, who formulated the anti-LGBTQ renewal clause last year, said during the April meeting that the library’s contents would once again influence the commission’s decision to renew the lease.
“We don’t want transgender books in the library. … The elephant in the room is that we don’t want the library to be promoting certain types of material,” Childs said. “If the library is, we come back to the question, do we want to renew it at all?”
Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, which warned commissioners to drop their censorship attempts during the first lease renewal discussion, said city officials need to remember constitutional protections.
“Each member of the commission should remember that their own discomfort with a certain book does not justify restricting its availability to everyone else in the community,” Brett said. “Not only is this potential censorship authoritarian, it has implications under even a basic reading of our First Amendment. We urge the commission to remember their obligations under the Constitution.”
Cremer said she and the library board had been trying to cooperate with the commission and concerned residents as much as possible.
“We’re providing services to the community,” Cremer said. “We’re taking care of the same people. I don’t see why there should be a problem.”
Following the April commission meeting, she sent a letter to the commissioners asking them to directly address their concerns with library staff, as they had a process in place to review book complaints.
Library staff are also participating in the advisory committee. Cremer said the library was sending regular updates about the library and the advisory committee’s work to the city commission.
But she is still fielding criticism from religious members of the community, including during a contentious June 28 library board meeting attended by Binsfeld and other St. Marys residents.
“As we move forward, we would like to see that all LGBTQ+ media — whether audio files, movies, books, activities, etc. — be removed from this branch altogether and from any access, including online ordering and inter-library loans, to any minor through this branch,” resident Stephen Murtha wrote in a letter to library board members.
The library should reflect the community’s Christian majority, Murtha wrote.
Cremer said for the most part, these complaints were from a small segment of the population and that she hasn’t had problems or complaints from a majority of library customers.
But she is concerned about the future of the library.
“We have continued, even though that stress and controversy has been significant,” Cremer said. “My staff and I have continued forward just as we always have to provide those services, because it’s not the people that we’re serving, it’s not their fault, but they’re the ones that are going to be losing.”
Scottie's Playtime 
I read this last night. I didn’t comment because it was a day full of stupid news about people doing harmful things purposely to hurt other people. I just couldn’t, but now I can! 🔥
I still wonder how bigots’s heads don’t explode when they spout, “God doesn’t make mistakes” about trans people. As I recall, that what is trans people and allies said to bigots first, meaning He made some people trans for His reasons, and also He gave other humans the grace to understand science and how to help His people with 2 spirits (to be brief.) Now the right wing says it without thinking that they’re saying the same thing we are saying: trans people are not mistakes, and if they want medical treatment, they ought to get it. If they simply want inclusion and representation, they ought to get that, too, as should every human. God knows bigots certainly get all that…
If a human is born, they have freaking human rights. The bigots sure claim human rights for themselves, why is it so hard for them to live in harmony with other humans who have (should have) the same rights? It’s not as if the atmosphere is going to run out of rights. With all the humans we’ve made, it’s running out of plenty of other stuff, but rights belong to all.
Shew. OK. It’s hotter than you-know-what here, & the humidity has my sinuses very swollen, but as soon as the storms pass by, the temps are supposed to decrease, and the humidity will definitely move along. I hope this system works like that for everyone; it’s moving East and slightly Southeast, and just keeps rollin’.
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Hello Ali. If god doesn’t make mistakes, what was the Noah flood story all about? Also what about putting a tree in the garden that the deity that knows the future would know the people would eat? That is just two examples. The god of the OT often made mistakes and admitted them. It was the Christians forming the Catholic Church that made god omnipotent and all powerful. Hugs
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Hi Scottie;
I do wonder if those who claim religious exemption from common decency and rationality continue to use the term “Christian”, meaning “Christ-like”?
I do not recall Christ reportedly speaking on homosexuality or someone having a sex change.
I do recall Him speaking quite clearly on Divorce, Humility, Cheating, Love for one’s Neighbor, being Judgemental, using the Church for Profit, Hypocrisy, and a whole host of other things that seem quite inconvenient to those who would shout their hatred from the mountain tops.
One of the other things Christ is reported to speak very clearly on is “render unto (the State) that which is (theirs) and unto God that which is God’s. Instead, these folks want to turn the State into their church and the Church into the cosigner of the State.
From the beginning of the so-called Christian Church, those who lead do so out of force, be it financial, emotional, social, or even the threat of violence and death. The church through its love affair with power caused the Dark Ages, sacked libraries and burned books it didn’t agree with, set back science, health, and education to near stone-age levels in the pursuit of being the only authority. What I’d like to see is a concerted effort of the church to stand on their merits; if the church is truly such a great place to be, why do so many feel parishioners attend due to feeling guilty, fearful, obligated, brow-beaten, and alternately ostracized and judged?
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Hello Randy. Again you have a way with words. Very good comment! Think of the money communities and the country could raise taxing churches and church property. Hugs
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