What a Friend the Trans Agenda Has in Librarians

As a soldier, I learned that one of the key responsibilities of a battlefield commander is to close every potential avenue of approach that the enemy might exploit to penetrate the front lines. This principle holds true not only in kinetic combat but also in cultural battles—those waged in the rhetorical and cognitive domains. Loyalty to a righteous cause is essential to preserving what T.S. Elliot referred to as the permanent things. In war, one of the most effective tools of the enemy to subvert is the use of a spy—someone within your own ranks who betrays his people and state for profit or ideology.

The Battle of Thermopylae offers one of history’s most memorable examples. Retold with extensive creative license in the 2006 film 300, the real battle took place in September of 480 B.C. Victory slipped away from the Greeks not because of inferior strength, but due to the treachery of a man named Ephialtes, who revealed a hidden path behind Greek lines to the Persians. His selfish betrayal handed his people over to defeat.

Today, a similar betrayal is unfolding in the cultural battlespace between those who believe in the moral foundation of the American experiment and those who seek to dismantle it. Our society is riddled with modern-day Ephialtes—agents of cultural subversion embedded across the institutions once trusted to safeguard truth-based community values. One such institution is our library system. Once seen as a safe and educational space, libraries are increasingly saturated with materials and events designed not to enlighten, but to indoctrinate. They now present children with messages that invert virtue: encouraging them to reject what is good and embrace what is harmful.

Each June, you’ll see the now-routine Pride Month book displays in public libraries. Come October, the American Library Association (ALA) also pushes its annual “Banned Books Week” campaign, conveniently omitting truly banned books like the Bible—prohibited by law in over 50 countries—and excluding books removed from platforms like Amazon for violating progressive orthodoxy or political correctness. The ALA’s definition of "banned" focuses primarily on any title that concerned parents don’t want displayed to their children.

For years, the ALA and its disciples in libraries across the country have served as a shield against community accountability. When parents raise concerns about graphic and disordered sexual content in children’s books, they’re dismissed. The excuse? "Professionals" curate the collections—and these professionals are ALA-certified, after all. That was the rationale used last year by senior leadership at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, when parents raised concerns about sexually explicit materials in the children’s section of the Combined Arms Research Library. The message: what the ALA has sanctioned, not even a U.S. Army general may question.

Just up the road from me, the Leavenworth Public Library includes titles like "Who Are You? A Kid's Guide to Gender Identity" as well as "Queer and Fearless: Poems Celebrating the Lives of LGBTQ+ Heroes" in its children's section—among a much wider collection of aligned titles. When a friend of mine attempted to photograph the full extent of this collection, staff prohibited it. Apparently, the same book deemed appropriate for a six-year-old is too controversial to be captured by a taxpaying adult’s camera.

This issue recently reignited in Leavenworth County after Mayor Holly Pittman unilaterally declared June as “Pride Month.” Several people—including two county commissioners—spoke out against this usurpation of municipal influence, as well as the propagation of LGBTQ+IA enthusiasm in the city’s library holdings. A political ruler took an action and received criticism at a public meeting. One would think the cycle complete. But not in this case. Leavenworth’s city library sent protest letters to all five county commissioners, a move then amplified by coverage in the Leavenworth Times. Soon after, the library director of nearby Lansing, Terri Wojtalewicz, appeared at a county commission meeting and objected to the commissioners' criticism of Mayor Pittman’s action and her town’s "Pride-oriented" library holdings. There is an unmistakable irony in Wojtalewicz emphasizing the importance of respecting “all viewpoints”—while speaking out against citizens who shared theirs. Disingenuous is the kindest word for such a form of counter-argument.

A few days later the Leavenworth Library posted a statement on its official Facebook page, casting itself as a political victim for having its contribution to the proliferation of LGBTQ+IA dogma noted by county commissioners during their expression of concern about Mayor Pittman’s proclamation. They run to evil like flies to dung. It’s interesting that people who work for taxpayers have so much time to conduct personal ideological activism on work time. This likely coordinated pressure campaign hits all the red herring talking points that deliberately misframe parental concerns about sexually explicit materials as today’s version of those who disliked "Tom Sawyer," "Huck Finn," and even the "Harry Potter" series in times past.

This isn't the first time I’ve seen local library staff respond with sensitivity to public critique. On April 23, 2024, I published a letter in the Leavenworth Times pointing out that as a taxing authority of municipal government that decides what will be made available to the community, the library acts as a political entity. The president of the Leavenworth Library Board of Trustees, Pauline Graeber, responded with a rebuttal—published not only in the local paper but also on the library’s taxpayer-funded website and official Facebook page—calling my observation “hyperbolic.” The underlying belief seems to be that the public must trust “the experts” without question. They invoke democracy but prefer that decisions remain confined to those whom historian and economist Thomas Sowell aptly describes as a self-anointed priesthood.

The most disturbing aspect of this trend is that the materials in question are not tucked away in the adult stacks—but are displayed prominently in the children’s section. The strategy is deliberate. Pride-obsessed activists are after our kids. Bad ideas target children because they are the most impressionable. They use techniques that are highly visible in some places, and more nuanced in others. A few months ago, my daughter won a prize for reading accomplishment. Among the rewards she received was a simple Q&A-style book for learning colors. But a few pages in, we found an illustration of two men fitting the stereotype of a homosexual couple picnicking with children. Why was this bought with taxpayer dollars and given to my daughter? The same question applies to drag queen story hours. These events aren’t held at senior citizen centers or halls of respectable adult debate for good reason. They are located for child audiences because a lifestyle that cannot biologically reproduce must, by necessity, recruit. This isn’t about reading stories, as local librarians protest with clutched pearls. It’s about catechizing young minds to join a disordered cause that leads to tragic fate. If an alternative lifestyle were truly normal, its proponents wouldn’t need to shout it so loudly.

Parents are the first line of defense for our children. Unfortunately our list of allies wears slim among municipal institutions. Public schools long ago declared war on the family, leading a growing number of parents to choose private and homeschooling options. Yet the cultural siege continues. Like the spies of old, today’s betrayers seek paths around our defenses. And at many public libraries, Ephialtes is hard at work.

As we reclaim public institutions for truth and sanity, the library system must be on our list.

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