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The Samuels Public Library in Front Royal, Va., will get its funding fully restored and avoid having Warren County supervisors control its handling of LGBTQ-related books under an agreement signed Tuesday by library and county leaders.
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The deal removes the threat of closure that had hung over the library since June, when the county withheld most of its funding for the coming year after a group of conservative activists sought the removal of LGBTQ books aimed at young readers. The standoff marked the first time the national conservative movement against books for children about gender and sexual orientation had threatened a public library in Virginia, though several school systems have wrestled with the issue.
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Under the new arrangement, Samuels agreed to include a member of the county supervisors on its executive committee, a subset of the 15-member board of trustees, which has always included a representative from the county board. The library trustees also agreed to consider candidates suggested by the county supervisors when seeking to appoint new library board members.
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The county had sought to gain control of the library board, which operates as a private nonprofit and has roots dating to 1799. But the library’s trustees rejected the takeover attempt, saying they had instituted parental controls in response to the controversy and would not consider further steps that they regarded as discriminating against LGBTQ patrons.
In a nod to both the recent upheaval and the library’s policy changes, the agreement says the library “shall continue to be responsive to public concerns as exhibited by recent changes to the Library’s collection with the addition of the New Adult section for ages 16 and older housing mature content. This collection shall be housed in the Adult area of the Library.”
“This is a positive outcome for all Warren County residents,” Melody Hotek, president of the library’s board of trustees, said Wednesday in a news release announcing the agreement. “We would like to thank the Warren County Board [of] Supervisors for listening to citizen input and negotiating in good faith to reach a workable solution that benefits the entire community.”
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Supervisors Chairwoman Vicky Cook said in the release that she is “pleased that Warren County Board of Supervisors and the Samuels Library Board of Trustees have come to an agreement that will continue our partnership of providing an outstanding library service to our community.”
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Despite an organized campaign for much of the year to overwhelm the library’s staff with requests to remove some 141 books, virtually all of them related to LGBTQ themes, Samuels Library has never been more popular. Its visitors are up 15 percent and the number of donors up 25 percent from 2022.
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The controversy caused the library’s director to resign over the summer, though, and fractured the community. Many of the Clean Up Samuels Library group clamoring for books to be removed and for the county to take over were affiliated with a local Catholic church and the conservative Christendom College, but last month a group of 42 Catholic churchgoers — at least one of whom was on the faculty at Christendom — submitted a petition saying they disagreed and stood by the library.
Around the same time, Robert Hupman, a farmer and chairman of the Warren County Republican Committee, posted a statement on Facebook calling for an end to the campaign against the library. “Let’s stop this nonsense from being dragged out any longer,” Hupman wrote, adding that he applauded the library for standing up to the supervisors because, “as a Republican, I do not believe in government overreach of any kind at any time. … I believe the library has been more than accommodating.”
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The Board of Supervisors, he said, “should agree with the terms Samuel’s library sets up.”
Less than a month later, the board largely did.
“Our group, of course, is ecstatic,” said Front Royal resident Charles Stewart, who is active with library supporters. “I think the pressure got to be a little much for the supervisors.”
Mark Egger, who started the campaign to remove books and has been one of the library’s most vocal critics, said via email: “My only comment is this: ‘A boy cannot become a girl, and a girl cannot become a boy.’ Put that in your article.”
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