After a vote this week by Smithtown library trustees, staffers removed Pride Month displays from the system’s children’s rooms, director Robert Lusak told Newsday.
Lusak said the displays included LGBTQ books that remain on the shelves in the children’s sections, but the move sparked a furor on social media Wednesday and was condemned by advocacy groups.
Trustee Marie Gergenti, elected to the board last fall with the backing of conservative group Long Island Loud Majority, said that she had made the proposal for removal of the displays at the board’s Tuesday night meeting after receiving “complaints about the displays for Pride Month. … Now we have two sides complaining. … It’s ridiculous — we’re a nice town.”
Other trustees declined to comment or could not be reached.
After what Lusak said was a 4-2 vote Tuesday night, he wrote a memo to the heads of the system’s four buildings directing them to “remove all Pride displays from all of our Children’s Rooms.” A copy of the memo, apparently leaked, circulated on social media. Lusak confirmed its authenticity.
Minutes from the meeting were not immediately posted Wednesday.
Lusak said the displays had been up since June 1 and had been scheduled to remain through the end of the month, though he was unsure about what books were featured. He said he had gotten “a handful of complaints” about the displays, which remain in teen and adult areas of the library. The library routinely offers themed displays coinciding with holidays and cultural events.
Suffolk Cooperative Library System director Kevin Verbesey said in an email that Smithtown’s board was the only library system in the county to “ban any specific kinds of displays from any specific locations in their library.”
He declined to comment specifically about the board’s vote, but said that in general, the best boards “keep to a policy setting and financial oversight role and allow their professional staff to develop the collections, programming, and services that best meets the community’s needs. ”
The Nassau Library System director did not immediately respond to an email request for comment on whether that county had seen any similar measures.
The Smithtown library system operates independently of the town and local school districts.
Amanda Babine, executive director of Equality New York, an advocacy group for LGBTQI New Yorkers and their families, said in an interview that the board’s decision was “despicable” and amounted to an “erasure of LGBTQ people and their families.”
Jay Fried, the Smithtown father of a transgender teen son, also criticized the move.
“It’s Pride Month, and we’re just looking for kids to feel some level of acceptance or feel where they’re not invisible,” he said. “The library is a place where you’re supposed to be represented no matter who you are.”
Nicholas Spangler covers the Town of Smithtown and has worked at Newsday since 2010.
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