Christian pastors in Kentucky urge theft of LGBTQ books from Shelbyville public library

Calling it "civil disobedience," pastors at Reformation Church say a member has already stolen the books so library patrons can't access them

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In June of 2024, Pastor Austin Keeler of Reformation Church in Shelbyville, Kentucky posted a completely unhinged video on Facebook in which he claimed the local library was trying to “groom and trans children” by making certain books available to them.

My local library, the Shelby County Public Library, is peddling this filth to children. The encroachment of evil is happening in your community, and you may not even be aware of how Satan is targeting the next generation.

Pastor Christian, have you checked out what books are being peddled in your local library? Will you stand to allow the children of the area in which your kingdom outpost exists to be swept up and swept away in the torrent of perversity and darkness that is ruining the lives and the souls of so many? If you search your library, what you find might shock you.

Our local library in Shelbyville, Kentucky, the Shelby County Public Library, hosts abominations such as “My Two Dads,” “My Two Moms,” “Learning from LGBTQ Leaders,” “Julian is a Mermaid.”

These books are written for children, and if you have the Holy Spirit of God in you, you ought to be filled with righteous indignation that books like these are being pushed through your library. Books containing stories of six-year-olds performing oral sex. Books encouraging young people to embrace the art of drag. In this book, it is admitted on page 23 that subversion—that is, the attempt to overthrow or undermine the image of God in man—is their goal. And, like the cross-dressing stage actors of old, laughter and humor makes it easier to fly under the radar. Also contained in this book is the glorification of incest and rosary-strewn sex toys.

Pastor Christian, listen to me. It is within your jurisdiction, and it is certainly your duty, to combat the perversion of your local library that is supposed to be an aid in the development of our young people, not an aid to their destruction. You must find out if this perversion is taking place, and then you must act.

Now, to be clear, this is not to say that we think everyone who works at the library is complicit in these sins. In fact, there are likely those who work at or for the library who don't even know that these books exist, but someone is allowing them.

If you are in Shelby County, we encourage you to express your outrage and demand that these books be removed… If you are in another county, we strongly encourage you to do the same. And understand that the library isn't the only front but is contributing to a larger agenda to push this immorality in our society…

Just FYI, there’s no book in which a six-year-old performs oral sex. The one he’s referencing, “Beyond Magenta,” includes the personal accounts of several people coming to terms with being transgender. One of the subjects, Mariah, says that beginning at age six, she began acting out sexually: “From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighborhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them… We were really young, but that’s what we did.” That doesn’t say oral sex happened when they were six. (How could it?) Furthermore, that recollection isn’t included as part of some how-to manual. It’s included as an example of how she acted out as a child as she struggled to find her self-worth. Later in the story, she realizes, “The thing is, real beauty comes from the inside.” The pastor obviously didn’t read the book or he would know that.

What about “The Art of Drag” encouraging “subversion” on page 23? That page contains a brief history of pantomime and talks about how the restriction on female performers in Britain was only lifted in the late 17th century, but they would still cross-dress and “joke about being free from the constrictions of feminine clothes.” The end of the page notes how more recent and popular cross-dressing stars “understood that a little laughter made the subversion easier to swallow, a technique that still runs through drag today.” That’s it. It’s not telling kids to be subversive, much less to overthrow God. It’s an accurate description of why various kinds of cross-dressing have been popular over the years—in this case, helping the audience be in on the gag. The pastor obviously didn’t read the book or he would know that.

As for the “glorification of incest and rosary-strewn sex toys,” it doesn’t exist. There’s a passage describing the professional relationship between director John Waters and the drag queen Divine. It says that one of their goals was to “shock audiences, which meant that nothing was off-limits: from vomit and incest to lobster fetishists and rosary-strewn sex toys.” The fans, we’re told, “were as disgusted as they were fascinated.” That’s obviously not an endorsement. That’s obviously not glorification. That’s just a description of what they did. The pastor obviously didn’t read the book or he would know that.

More broadly, though, the description for that video includes the list of a number of books that the pastor wants to condemn because they promote “transgenderism.” Many of the books don’t do that at all; they’re just written by trans people or by cisgender authors who don’t demonize LGBTQ people.

While the video never directly told viewers to check out those books for the purpose of destroying them, it was implied: “Friends, the Shelby County Public Library is promoting the vile LGBTQ agenda to groom and trans children in Kentucky. From the looks of it, it's been happening for several years now, and we missed it… Would you help us expose whats happening here?” The list of specific books that were deemed problematic was also included so that people would know what to take.

And now that wink wink plan appears to have worked. According to Jack Brammer of the Kentucky Lantern, a church member checked those books out from the library shortly after that video was published and has not returned them despite multiple notices, costing the library $410.85.

Keeler and his church colleagues are fully encouraging all this, calling it an “act of civil disobedience.”

“Yes—we have urged Christians, both locally and across the country, to search their libraries for books that promote sodomy, gender confusion and rebellion against God—and if found, to check them out and never return them as an act of civil disobedience,” pastors Jerry Dorris and Tanner Cartwright and Austin Keeler, an evangelist with the church mission, Reformation Frontline Missions, recently told the Lantern in an email.

…

“This is not literacy — it’s grooming,” Dorris said.

Asked about the removal of public property, Dorris said, “We reject the idea that civil rebellion is only legitimate when it’s done with rainbow flags or Marxist slogans. Civil disobedience is a biblical category when obedience to God and love for neighbor demand it.”

Of course, this isn’t civil disobedience. It’s theft. It’s a form of vandalism encouraged by Christians who don’t want anyone having access to certain kinds of information because it might pierce the bubble they want everyone to live inside. One of the Ten Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Steal. I guess at this church, the “no reading” rule also applies to the Bible.

Neither the library nor the pastors would identify the person who checked out the books. But that’s irrelevant. The pastors are the ones at fault here for encouraging this. Jerry Dorris says he’s not sure where the books are, but they “have not been destroyed to my knowledge.”

The library has not yet replaced the books, though they said most of them were not in “high demand,” which isn’t that surprising. If anything, it just reveals how overblown the pastors’ concerns are. It’s also worth remembering that libraries don’t purchase books because they promote some agenda:

Amanda Perry-Davis, the library’s collection manager, said the library acquires books generally based on their popularity. That can be determined by various book reviews, journals and magazines. Library professional journals recommended the “lost books” as appropriate titles for each age level.

Patrons also suggest specific books to acquire, said Perry-Davis.

Whether it’s effective to check out the books so no one can get them, however, is another question.

You may recall that a Kansas pastor tried something like this a year ago. He told his congregation to check out all the LGBTQ-themed books in the local library, and then he posted a picture of his haul on instagram:

It was a ridiculous thing to do for a number of reasons, one of which is that if someone wanted to read any of those books, the library would just procure another copy.

All of this could also backfire. If the LGBTQ-themed books are checked out of the library, it suggests there’s a demand for those books, which means the library could purchase more copies of them if they feel it’s necessary. (If the books were never checked out, the library would eventually just get rid of them.)

As I said last year, this whole stunt tells you a lot about the conservative Christian mindset. Instead of facing reality, some pastors want to shield people from ideas that may go against what their churches teach. Censorship is one of those tools. Vandalism is another.

These pastors have an underlying belief that if people never learn about LGBTQ identities, or read about those characters, they’ll never become LGBTQ themselves. But as anyone who’s LGBTQ can tell you, that’s not at all how it works. Kids who are gay or trans will continue being gay or trans. Whether they can accept that—and whether they make it into adulthood at all—is an open question.

But trying to put blindfolds on everyone is what conservative Christians love to do, no matter how badly the method fails. They often take the same approach to sex and atheism; it’s why they fight comprehensive sex education in schools and flip out at the prospect of objective lessons on world religions. Education is treated as the enemy of faith. If these pastors really had the courage of their convictions, they should be encouraging people to read those LGBTQ books because their sermons would contextualize the “ideological” message those books include. Instead, they don’t want anyone to have access to those books at all.

It’s too bad the person who checked out the books probably hasn’t done anything useful with them… like reading them. It’s too bad. That person might learn to empathize with the struggles LGBTQ people have faced, often at the hands of Christians like the ones at this church. Christians who always pretend they’re acting in the name of love.

It’s telling that these pastors are cloaking themselves in righteousness while spreading lies about books they haven’t even read, all to manufacture outrage and fuel their culture war. They’re not really afraid of “perversion” or “grooming.” They’re worried that a child might read one of these books and realize that love, identity, and family can exist in forms beyond the rigid boundaries set by these men. Instead of expanding their own minds, these pastors have nothing to offer by censorship, theft, and deceit. Because their faith is too weak to withstand any scrutiny.

They’re railing against sin while engaging in it themselves. And the message to the LGBTQ kids in their pews and their community is that their lives are too shameful even to be read about. That’s the legacy of these kinds of men. They’re not heroes or martyrs for their faith. They’re petty, pathetic censors terrified of new ideas, who only want to stand in the way of human dignity by calling it God’s work.

If you’re interested in making a donation to the Shelby County Public Library, you can do that here. It’s the best way to help them acquire material.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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