With a federal lawsuit against the Crawford County Library System set to go to trial in April, both sides have asked a judge to go ahead and decide the case. Such pretrial motions are common but often unsuccessful.
More interesting, and disturbing, are some of the details in a “statement of facts” prepared by attorneys for the parents who sued the Crawford County Quorum Court, the county judge and the library board on behalf of themselves and their minor children.
The lawsuit, set for trial in U.S. District Court in Fort Smith on April 22, is challenging what plaintiffs have called “the stigmatization of certain books by placing a prominent color label on them and moving the books to a separate ‘social section’” in the system’s libraries, including the main one in Van Buren.
The books, most notably those with LGBTQ+ topics, were moved from the children’s and youth sections of each library to a special section, and even then sometimes placed on a high shelf to make them harder to access.
You can read the full statement of facts from the plaintiffs here. Or you can just read some of the more interesting information gleaned here from the 25-page document. Unless otherwise noted, direct quotations are from the lawsuit’s plaintiffs.
—The issues over children’s books with LGBTQ+ topics or characters became public in late 2022 when anti-LGBTQ+ activists complained to the county’s quorum court. “Some of the activists were affiliated with an apparent Christian Nationalist organization called the ‘River Valley City Elders,‘” the plaintiffs said
That’s the Fort Smith organization with the lion mascot, which claims its “watchmen” spiritually govern the gates of the River Valley’s cities.
A screenshot from the City Elders website
—In November 2022, a local physician, Dr. Jeffrey Hamby, and his wife, Tammi Hamby, wrote a letter to the quorum court asserting “that parents had a constitutional right to exclude books normalizing homosexual lifestyles.” It wasn’t long before Tammi Hamby was on the library board and named its chair. (She is no longer chair, though she’s still on the board.)
At a December 2022 quorum court meeting, Dr. Hamby made it clear he wanted books about gay and transgender people not just hard to reach but entirely removed from the library. “The gist of his argument was that: 1) Parents’ religious liberties are infringed when county libraries contain children’s materials inconsistent with certain parents’ religious beliefs, 2) ‘LGBT books’ harm children, and 3) the libraries, merely by having the books, ‘teach’ children morals, rather than the parents teaching. River Valley City Elders member John Riordan echoed Dr. Hamby’s sentiments.”
—Shortly after the quorum court meeting, then-library director Deidre Grzymala and her staff reached a compromise with the quorum court “to sequester offending books so that children could not find them.” As part of that “compromise,” Grzymala and her staff moved “more than 200 books” into a new special section called the “Social Issue Section” or the “Social Section.”
That’s no typo — 200. “Director Grzymala pulled any books ‘that might have been controversial … that somebody in the community might have an issue with.'” A justice of the peace said she “did what she had to do.”
—Books moved to the social sections weren’t limited to LGBTQ+ content but also included books Grzymala “thought may challenge right-wing, Christian sensibilities. For example, Social Section books include: a book on world religions; a book about people with disabilities; and a book that normalizes blended families, i.e., families in which both parents are divorced and have children from prior relationships.” Still dissatisfied, the quorum court later paid Grzymala to resign.
—None of the children’s books moved to the social section had “naked
people or … obscene graphic materials.” And, “the Defendants did not identify any child psychologist or similar expert supporting the idea that ‘LGBT books’ harm children.”
The statement of facts by the defendants is less exciting, but here are a few tidbits:
—”The Social Section at the Cedarville branch does not contain children’s books.”
—”Director Gryzmala selected material that may be considered inappropriate for some children” in deciding which books to move to social sections.
—”Director Gryzmala selected material that contained graphic images that could be
considered inappropriate for children.”
—”If TLKP [one of the child plaintiffs] wanted to get a book from the Social Section, she could go and get it.”
