MassResistance helps Wisconsin parents force Library Board to enact anti-Drag Queen policy – a big victory!

How local group overcame the impending LGBT juggernaut in their community.

With MassResistance on board, their citizen action hit a home run!

March 13, 2020

Wisconsin parent Darla Meyers (left) shows her local Library Board a pornographic, sexualized children's book available in the library. Are Drag Queens coming next, she wants to know?

With the help of MassResistance, a fearless local pro-family group staged a bold pre-emptive action. They forced their local Library Board to enact a strong new policy that would make it nearly impossible for a “Drag Queen Story Hour” (DQSH) to come to their public library. But it wasn’t without a very nasty fight at the beginning.

Hudson, Wisconsin, is basically a suburb of the “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, located just across the St. Croix River (which forms the state border).

Last summer, the local pro-family group Citizens for the St. Croix Valley noticed that Drag Queen events were happening in several public libraries in the Twin Cities. They became very concerned that it would soon spread to towns like theirs across the border in western Wisconsin.

Then they noticed that a local left-wing activist group “Hudson Inclusion Alliance” had a prominent member who called herself a “drag queen mother” who is very proud of her Las Vegas drag queen son. It seemed like only a matter of time until they would bring Drag Queens into the Hudson public library.

Another problem was that the Hudson Library Board president – who controls the agenda of that body – conveyed to them that he doesn't want to call attention to that issue, because there were “funding issues” going on that he didn’t want to jeopardize.

The parents desperately wanted to take proactive action to keep Drag Queen Story Hour from coming to Hudson. But they needed some good advice and strategic guidance to be successful.

Contacting MassResistance

In mid-October, Darla Meyers of Citizens for the St. Croix Valley contacted MassResistance. Our Organization Director, Arthur Schaper, began working with them.

They needed a good plan. Besides the Board president’s unwillingness to do anything, the parents realized they would have to deal with pushback from liberal activists in the area, as well as certain aggressive pro-LGBT library employees who would find ways to subvert their efforts to make any progress.

These local liberals can be vicious. Two years ago, they persuaded the vile Southern Poverty Law Center to classify the Citizens for the St. Croix Valley as a “hate group”. This is because the group was able to stop an illegal Syrian refugee resettlement in the Hudson area, working through a Wisconsin Congressman. And soon afterwards, the Hudson Inclusion Alliance tried again to get the settlement in Hudson, but the group stopped that also – through local action.

The parents get started!

Arthur opted to move relatively swiftly to catch the Left off-guard.

The first thing Arthur said was that they must educate the community to what was happening – and get people to join them in taking action.

The focus would be the Library Board meeting, which was coming up on Nov. 19, 2019. People were encouraged to contact the Board members prior to the meeting and let them know in very strong terms how they felt about this issue.

Darla put together a pamphlet, which they distributed across town. They also notified people on their website and via email, which was also very effective.

The front of Darla's pamphlet that was passed out across the community. It didn't mince words! See the entire pamphlet here.

It worked. Within a short period of time, a veritable flood of people contacted the Library Board, particularly the president, demanding that their library be protected from “Drag Queens” targeting young children.

Confronting the Library Board on Nov. 19!

On Nov. 19, members of Citizens for the St. Croix Valley also came to the Library Board meeting to speak during the public comments section. They showed large “Drag Queen” photos and asked the Board members pointed questions about the policies to deal with people presenting to children in the library. It was quite shocking. Word had already gotten out that one local businessman was pulling back his financial support for the library until the “Drag Queen” issue was settled. You can view the video here. (Public comments are at the beginning.)

All this had definitely angered certain people. Just before the meeting, Darla Meyers was passing out the pamphlets. Most people were happy to take them. But one man came up to her, yelled at her, and became verbally abusive before going inside. It turned out that the man was the husband of the public library’s children’s librarian. Then someone (we don’t know who) called the police, claiming Darla was “blocking people from leaving the driveway.” But the police officer agreed she was doing nothing illegal, and even accepted a pamphlet.

Before going into the meeting, Darla went into the children’s section of the library and took the vulgar and sexually obscene children’s book, “It’s Perfectly Normal” to the Board meeting to show the Board. But before she could, the children’s librarian, who was also there, grabbed the book from her husband, whom Darla had given the book, to show him how bad it was. The librarian took it back to the library area. Darla followed her and ended up bringing the book back into the meeting room. She was able to show the Library Board what was already being given to kids - and why Drag Queens could be next. But it was an unpleasant and obnoxious situation that should not be tolerated, especially from a library staff member.

This pornographic book was in the children's section of the Hudson public library. See sample pages from it here. (Caution: graphic content.) The library staff clearly had no problem with it.

The Library Board president was clearly angered and flustered. At one point during the meeting the president made a very unprofessional series of attacks on the parents. He accused the parents of telling the community that the “Drag Queen” issue would be on that meeting’s agenda for discussion by the Board. (Untrue – the parents did not say that.) He also publicly accused them for telling people that the library already planned to have a “Drag Queen” event. (They didn’t say that, either. They simply said that it was likely to happen if nothing was done to stop it.)

He also accused the parents of not coming to him first privately to discuss this. (In fact, they sent him multiple texts and emails about it, and invited him to two meetings which he declined to attend.) There were also ugly comments about the parents being a “hate group” who were trying to make the library a place for “religious fanatics.”

But if nothing else, the Library Board definitely got the message that there was a problem it couldn’t just ignore. The outpouring from the community had definitely hit the mark.

Step two of Arthur’s plan – the policy

The next part of the plan was sensible – and hard to oppose.

Last August, our Texas MassResistance chapter persuaded the city of Leander, TX, to implement an innovative policy that would make it nearly impossible for “Drag Queens” or other destructive people to present to young children. Arthur had Darla contact Leander and get a copy of their policy.

At the next Library Board meeting, Dec. 17, 2019, several members of Citizens for the St. Croix Valley again spoke during the public comments section. One of the parents presented the Board with a copy of the Leander policy to consider.

The parents said they felt they had been treated disrespectfully by the Board, that they did not feel comfortable with where the library was headed. They rebuked the Board president for his unprofessional and untruthful attacks against them at the previous meeting. They said that the Board should consider a policy so that “the library should be proactive and prevent a crisis,” should the Drag Queen issue show up on their doorstep. Parents shared with the Board more horror stories, with photos, of perverted Drag Queen events at other libraries. (It’s not a pretty picture, to be sure!)  You can view the video HERE.

On Dec. 17, a member of Citizens for the St. Croix Valley (third from right) reprimands the Library Board president for his unprofessional and hostile behavior during the previous meeting.

The Board did not take any action, but gave the impression that now they’d be willing to work with the group.

The policy gets written and approved!

In fact, after the December Library Board meeting, the attitude of the public officials changed miraculously.

On February 6, the Leander library policy was taken up by the Hudson Library Board’s Policy and Personnel Sub-Committee. The committee members were not only very receptive, but, as Darla told us, actually improved the policy in some important ways! Among other things, the new policy includes clear-cut instructions about background checks and requires applicants to be as transparent as possible with the library and its staffers. It basically assures that sexual deviant entertainers won’t be using the library to push their LGBT agenda. This was wonderful!

The following week on February 11, the new policy went before the full Library Board, which passed it unanimously.  You can read the new policy HERE.

After the vote, Darla and the others at Citizens for St. Croix Valley said the following:

This is another example of citizen action – focused at the right place and time – to make a difference! MassResistance is thrilled to be able to help this outstanding group of pro-family parents be successful in this awful fight that’s sweeping across the nation.

Feel free to contact Darla Meyers through MassResistance for more information.