A librarian in Idaho has resigned from her position citing the threat from rising rightwing extremists after a group of enraged parents pressured a local school board members to ban books on LGBTQ themes.
The Boundary county library director, Kimber Glidden, decried the environment of growing extremism and threats in her recent resignation announcement on Facebook and admitted that the hostility she faced had affected her so much she had contemplated moving away from the area altogether.
“Nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community,” Glidden wrote in her announcement, the Spokesman-Review reported.
Librarians across America have faced the ire of a rightwing political groundswell that has targeted books on racial justice and LGBTQ issues.
The strife in Boundary, Idaho, in recent months serves as a microcosm for what librarians and school board members have encountered across the country. It reflects an escalating movement, guided by the group Moms for Liberty, a group linked to deeply pocketed rightwing groups and conservatives, by Republicans to prevent the teaching of race and gender identity in schools.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told the Guardian in January that such purported “grassroots” attempts to ban books have continued to rise in the past year.
A group of parents, known as the Boundary County Library Board Recall, whose goal is to “protect children from explicit materials and grooming”, launched a petition in July to recall four school board members after they updated a library policy that had not been updated for years.
“Selection of materials will not be affected by any such potential disapproval,” the new policy noted. “[T]he Boundary County Library will not place materials on ‘closed shelves’ or label items to protect the public from their content.”
Gidden, who was hired late last year, told the Idaho Statesman that she chose to wait to leave her post until the library’s budget was finalized because her early departure “could jeopardize whether the library district gets funded”.
She noted that unlike other places where book bans have targeted books centered around race and gender equality and identity, she saw that her library “does not have the titles that people are wanting to ban”, the Spokesman-Review reported.
What finally pushed her to resign was the group’s inability to listen to her answers and their opposition to rejoining the American Library Association earlier this year.
“It wasn’t a final straw so much as a constant barrage of the same rhetoric and people not listening to my answers,” Glidden told the Spokesman-Review. “They don’t want to hear the truth.”
