If you go woke, you’ll definitely lose the people’s support…This is exactly what happens to a Michigan library that almost lost all of its funding earlier this week.
Voters in a western Michigan township last week chose to defund its public library after a campaign organized by a conservative community group argued that a display of books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and stories was “setting children up for sexual exploitation.”
Jamestown is a small community outside Grand Rapids.
Michigan township defunds public library over refusal to remove pro-LGBT books – LifeSite https://t.co/h0gyRnM2Ha
— Beri (@sniffydogs) August 6, 2022
Larry Walton, the library board’s president stated that the library will lose 84 percent of its $245,o00 annual budget due to the failure of the millage question.
According to the unofficial count from the Ottawa County Clerk’s Office, voters show down the millage question by a vote of 1,905 opposed to 1,142 in favor. If the measure had passed, it would have renewed and increased the millage of 0.4186 mills to 0.60 mills through 2032.
Residents and community activists from across the town said that the primary reason they refused to vote for the millage was because of the library’s inclusion of woke books in its collection.
More details of this story from ‘The Epoch Times’ Reports:
After a battle over LGBT-themed books with explicit illustrations, residents of Jamestown Township, Michigan, overwhelmingly voted to not renew a property tax millage that has helped fund their public library.
Over 60 percent of Jamestown voters voted “no” on Tuesday to a 10-year millage renewal and increase for the local Patmos Library. Some 3,000 people, representing a third of the township’s population, participated in the election.
The bulk of the library’s $245,000 annual budget comes from the now-defeated millage, which means that according to library board president Larry Walton, Patmos will run out of money in early 2023. It also means that residents won’t have their property taxes raised by $24.
Walton told Bridge Michigan that he “wasn’t expecting” the battle over graphic LGBT-themed books to end this way, saying it was “very disappointing” for people to be “short-sighted” in closing down the library over those materials.
The vote comes as libraries across the country face a surge in demands to ban Groomer’s books.
Sources: 100percentfedup, The Epoch Times
