A county commissioner in Wyoming who compared parents insisting that the local library remove pornography from book shelves available to children to Nazis has quit.
It is MassResistance, a pro-family organization that works on strategic campaigns around the nation, that is reporting the departure from the Campbell County commission of Daniel Reardon.
He was documented as staring at parents and comparing them to Nazis during a meeting last year where parents adamantly objected to what they considered pornography in the public library.
The organization reported, “Like most areas in Wyoming, Campbell County is quite conservative. But unfortunately, liberals and RINOs have been elected to key positions. Last summer, local MassResistance parents began complaining to their county commission about the pornographic and obscene LGBT books for children and teenagers appearing in the public library. Some of the graphic homosexual books for young teenagers are sickening even for adults.”
The library board, run by leftists, refused to address the issue and the five-member county commission, which supervises the library board, “was stacked 3-2 against doing anything,” MassResistance reported.
“One county commissioner, Daniel G. Reardon, was particularly hostile to the idea of shielding children from obscenity and LGBT pornography,” the report said. “On July 13, Reardon sent an email to a constituent smearing the parents who had objected to a ‘transgender’ performing for young children at the library. He wrote, ‘It is a sad state of affairs where we regress back to the Matthew Shepard days because of ignorance of hate.’ When this became public, parents were livid.”
Then at a commission meeting, he lost it.
He said the commission was there to support the library’s book selection and that “censoring” LGBT books was like censoring books on religions.
MassResistance reported, “Then he really went off the rails. It’s the parents who are not doing their jobs, he said. It’s the parents’ fault for not supervising what their children are reading in the library. He said that parents need to ‘stop talking about censoring, taking books out, burning books, and going back to the days of the Nazis.'”
He also ordered one parent ejected from the meeting.
The news got around and the parents redoubled their efforts, appearing at every commission and library board meeting to insist on changes to protect children.
The commission in October even voted to ban all public comment, a constitutionally suspect move, “to keep the parents from being able to complain,” the report said.
Then last month, Reardon quit.
He said it was because he was moving to Cheyenne, even though his family already had made that move and he had rented a residence in Campbell County.
That move came almost at the same time the library board chairman quit the leadership position, just staying on the board.
“Since Reardon was technically a Republican (though an insufferable RINO), the process for replacing him was for the local Republican Central Committee to nominate three people, and the commissioners would vote to accept one of them,” the report said. “The commissioners apparently got the message from the outraged parents. At the Jan. 27 commission meeting, they selected Don Hamm as the new commissioner. According to the parents who met with the candidates, Hamm was right on their wavelength regarding the library problems.”
The report said parents now expect, with a shift in the majority of the commission, some changes may be coming.
WND had reported on the situation in Campbell County as it developed. There parents complained about the library and filed a complaint, only to have a prosecutor abruptly find “scientific” value in the objectional materials.
The parents had filed a document requesting a criminal case. In Wyoming, the law exempts schools and libraries from prosecution for displaying obscene material, but the “law does not exempt them” if they encourage children to engage in sexual relations, which is a crime.
Jonathan G. Lange, a pastor of a church on the other side of Wyoming, wrote as the dispute was developing at the Federalist about the problem facing parents.
Lange, the leader of the Wyoming Pastors Network, pointed out the American Library Association “recognizes no age limits on what children can access — either in print, video, audio, or online.”
He explained that means the ALA opposes restrictions on porn, citing filters on computers as well as the books, “Doing It,” “The V-Word” and “This Book is Gay.”
“Unless you read the above-named titles for yourself, you will likely not believe what unsuspecting children can encounter in your local library. These titles would be perfectly at home in the seediest ‘adult book store.’ Who but the most jaded parents would dream that a library might display them in the children’s section at the eye-level of your average seven-year-old?”
And the libraries?
He explained, “By attractive, kid-friendly displays, they invite curious children to read what your local newspaper editor is ashamed to print.”
He warned American libraries are turning the Constitution on its head.
“Every county and school district library in America could be indecently exposing children to explicit content. Most libraries endorse and subscribe to the ALA’s twisted version of the First Amendment. Through guidance such as the Library Bill of Rights, The Freedom to Read Statement, and the Freedom to View Statement, the ALA treats parents shielding the innocence of their own children as violators of the First Amendment,” he said.
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