The Hockley County Memorial Library recently received backlash over its short-lived Pride Month book display.
The library put up the book display on May 29 to commemorate Pride Month, which featured adult and young adult fiction novels, including titles such as Heartstopper, Hymn to Dionysus, Forgive-Me-Not, and And They Were Roommates.
The display was taken down last Monday after a group of women interrupted a Commissioner’s Court Meeting, asking the County Judge Sharla Baldridge if she had jurisdiction to make the library staff remove the display.
The women were concerned that the display had the potential to harm and indoctrinate children and felt strongly that the books displayed were objectionable from both a moral and religious standpoint.
The court explained that items not on the agenda could not be lawfully discussed, and that the women should apply to put the items on the next meeting’s agenda.
“Display controversy” The women responded that they did not want to wait on the court’s “rules and policies” and that they wanted to “strike while the iron was hot”, to which Judge Baldridge responded that she would not “break the law just because you want me to”. The women soon left, and the meeting continued.
Later that day, Judge Baldridge informed the library staff that the women had spoken with her again and were threatening to picket the library, at which point the library staff felt that, to avoid the book titles from being targeted and banned from the library altogether, it would be best to remove the display before it incited further complaints.
On that Monday, the library staff began receiving calls, “not about the display, just on the subject of Pride Month and the presence of queer books in our catalog.”
The staff says they received five calls in total, including one complaint over the upcoming Drag Show to be hosted at the Levelland City Park, which the Hockley County Memorial Library is in no way affiliated with. Until that day, the staff had received no formal complaints regarding the display.