When you start outlying books because of your personal religious and
moral beliefs in this country, you're going against the Constitution.
You're going against what we were founded for.
This is a [BLEEP] show, and I'm embarrassed for this board.
>> Speaker 2: Those were the powerful words of a resident of Campbell County,
Wyoming, where that board decided to fire its longtime public librarian for
refusing to remove books conservatives in the community deemed too sexual.
Before we go on, Cenk, was that man right about what the Constitution says?
>> Speaker 3: Of course.
Look, as you're gonna see in a second,
this had nothing to do with being too sexual.
It had everything to do with banning it because it had LGBTQ material in it.
And why would you wanna ban that?
Well, there's only one reason, and that's because of your religious beliefs.
And so, in case you're unclear about it, and apparently, almost every Republican
is unclear about this, this establishment clause of the First Amendment says,
congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
That means you get to exercise your own religion any way you like at your home,
but you cannot have the government say,
the librarian won't take out books that have gay people in them.
We hate her because my fundamentalist religious views says that there should be
nothing mentioned about gay people in a library, and hence,
the government should do what my religion says.
Sorry, but you're in the wrong country.
Saudi Arabia might work out for you, Iran might work out for you, but
America, we do not establish a religion.
So your particular religious beliefs are wonderful for you, but irrelevant for
the rest of us and for the government.
By the way, I appreciate that brother, and
all the good people of Wyoming that came out to fight this.
Unfortunately, they lost.
But at least there's good folks in Wyoming fighting back.
Ray, back to you.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was great to see him and
so many people come out to support her.
So let's get into some background on this librarian.
From HuffPost, Terri Lesley had been an employee of the library system for
27 years, including 11 years as director.
According to members of the community in the town of 30,000,
she was widely beloved.
At the special meeting in which she was dismissed,
hundreds of people showed up to support her.
So how did this all end up going down?
So, for two years, the library board and right wing activists had been trying
to get Lesley to remove books they were alleging are inappropriate for minors.
So some info on that.
In the spring of 2021, community members came to the library to complain about
alleged sexual content and books in the Teen and Kids section, targeting titles
like, How Do You Make a Baby, by Anna Fiske, and Doing It, by Hannah Witton.
That June, a teen volunteer wrote a Pride Month blog post for
the library celebrating LGBTQ authors.
And some people living in Gillette pushed back, including a local officer,
official, excuse me, who said it was harmful to the community.
And when the library hired Mikayla Oz, a children's magician who happened to
be transgender for an event a month later, all hell broke loose.
So more on the hell that broke loose and the absurdity of the response to that,
one longtime library staffer spoke under the condition of anonymity and
had this to say, the magician was simply a well-renowned magician who was hired for
a summer program.
Her gender identity was irrelevant, but
that was the match that lit the tinder box.
So in October of '21, supporters and
critics of the library gathered at a board meeting to voice their concerns about
the library supposedly providing sexually explicit and abusive material to minors.
One woman said during public comment, that her personal survey of the teen section
indicated that 60% of the books were witchcraft,
while another said that the library had become an indoctrination center.
Which I'll say, I think that in this country,
any library should be allowed to have books on witchcraft.
It's your right,
it's your constitutional right to be able to pick that up and read it.
But I digress.
Lesley claims that some activists actually went to the Sheriff's office
to try to get her arrested for not removing these witchcraft books.
Now, community members challenged 29 books in 2021 and 2022,
and she stuck to her guns, Lesley, and absolutely refused to remove them.
She said she did it because, for one, her belief that a diverse collection of
books is crucial to running a successful library, and
also because she was worried about being sued for violating the First Amendment,
which prohibits government sanctioned censorship.
She had to say this, I believe the community is harmed by not having access
to a wide variety of information, public libraries are for everyone.
Our collection should serve all citizens of the community.
So because she upheld the Constitution, stuck to her guns,
the board voted to fire her.
And she did an interview with CNN just yesterday.
Here's what she had to say about whether or
not the books in her library were actually inappropriate.
>> There is nothing in the library that could be classified as pornography
in any way, shape, or form.
We do have some sex education books and biology books,
things like that, that are important for
youth to have access to in case they have questions.
There were some LGBTQ themes in these books, and I felt like the LGBTQ
part of that was a big part of what the complaints from the public were about.
>> Speaker 2: Cenk, the party that supposedly loves free speech and
is anti-censorship, censoring a public library, not even a school's library,
just a public library,
because they didn't like some of the information in some of the books.
>> Speaker 3: Okay, so first of all, mask is off.
They were pretending that this was because they were worried about groomers and
worried about protecting the kids when all this started, right?
Now, there's not even allegations of that.
For example, the person who was gonna read happens to be transgender.
Nobody even knew it, it's just cuz there's a certain percentage of transgender people
in the country, and they're like, it's a transgender person.
We hate them, so we don't want them to read to our kids.
So wait, there's no allegation of anything inappropriate at all.
The only thing that they think is inappropriate is her existence.
So mask is off.
Just admit it.
You're bigots.
It's okay.
It's not okay, but that's your life, and that's your choices.
But I need you to understand, don't come and tell us, no, no, I don't mind.
Look at how they always phrase like, I don't mind.
Like, thank you, we appreciate it.
No, I don't mind gay people or trans people, no, no, no.
I just don't want them to read books or something and be in public or something.
And they're always flaunting things.
Straight people never flaunt anything, right?
They never kiss in public.
They never hold hands in public, etc.
Now, guys, it's super obvious!
We've been teaching sex ed for decades in this country.
All of a sudden, they're like, LGBTQ people are also in there, and
they acknowledge their existence in those books?
No, that's it.
Just admit that you're doing this because of hate.
Remember, they fired her.
The people who were in favor of hate won.
There was good people there in Wyoming, but unfortunately, they lost, okay?
So that's Point 1, Point 2 is now it's turned into a literal witch hunt,
cuz that lady said she was worried about witchcraft, and
that's why she wanted to fire the librarian.
They think she's a witch, and that's why they fired her.
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
What am I supposed to do?
I'm supposed to humor you?
She thought 60% of the books in a library in Wyoming,
60% were about witchcraft.
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Do you not see that?
Apparently, there are people in this country almost all right wingers,
you have to acknowledge that, almost all right wingers.
I don't mean all the right wing,
I mean the people who do it are all right wingers.
They come in, and they go, yeah, yeah, witchcraft, man.
A gay person, witch, witch, witch!
I found a witch.
I'm not against gay people.
No, you're bigots.
It's okay, that's your personal opinion, but now you're firing librarians over it.
And the last thing I'll say is, so
you're not going after the bankers who are robbing us blind?
You're not going after political donors?
I mean, look, Republicans claim they cared about corruption.
I'm here to tell you, you wanna take out the private donors like George Soros?
I'm with you.
Let's go take out all the donors and
make sure they never buy our politicians again, right?
No, you're not worried about any of that.
You're not worried about the powerful that are screwing you.
You're worried about librarians?
You're worried about librarians, and you got a war on librarians?
Congratulations, Republicans.
You have wonderful priorities.
And if you're proud of this, all right, well,
I guess you belong in the Republican Party.
>> Speaker 5: Yeah, can I just say,
discrimination against witches is also not okay?
But you're absolutely right.
The fact that this happened in a public library and not a school library,
completely destroys all of their previous book banning arguments.
Or whatever reasons that they had, those are out of the window now.
And book bans really grind my gears, for lack of a better idiom right now.
I don't know why people don't understand that reading a book,
even owning a book, having it on your personal library,
it doesn't mean that you're endorsing the ideas within the book.
It doesn't mean that you agree with the ideas in the book,
it just means that you have been exposed to the ideas within the book.
And that's really telling, because that's what they're actually afraid of, right?
These are the same people who read the same book over and over again, and
have convinced themselves that's all they need to know about the world, and history,
and science, and morality, it's all in that one book.
And they're terrified of everything else.
And that's why their worldviews are so myopic.
And it's fine.
Live your life, but I wanna read.
I wanna read all of it.
And also, what counts as porn?
Nicholas Sparks books have sex scenes in them.
Are they banning those two?
I don't know.