JAMESTOWN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – After a library millage failed to pass in last week’s August primary, voters in Ottawa County’s Jamestown Township will have another chance to decide funding for it in the November general election.
The Patmos Library Board voted unanimously on Monday night to put the millage to another vote. It will seek a renewal of the library’s current millage, as well as a slight increase of one-tenth of a mil so it can be self-sufficient rather than relying on the township.
Some voters who chose “no” on the millage pointed to the library’s promotion of books for the LGBTQ+ community.
The group, the Jamestown Conservatives, pointed to the Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir” and asked for its removal. That book topped the American Library Association’s list of the top 10 most challenged books of 2021.
According to the book and author’s description on Amazon, Maia Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns. It states, “Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.”
The board said that waiting until next year to put the initiative on the ballot again would cost the library an additional $8,000.
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