This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation.\u00a0Around this time last year, Rachel Rodman was happily employed as a library clerk and program assistant with the Crawford County Library District in the east-central part of Missouri. Rodman didn\u2019t think anything of the display she curated for Pride month last June, highlighting LGBTQ+ books from the district\u2019s collection in the one room library within a community center. Rodman says she was given free reign to create displays and had no reason to suspect that her actions would lead to her firing. The display was up for five days before Rodman says her branch manager left her a handwritten note telling her to remove it. Rodman refused, posting to Facebook on June 5, 2025 that she wouldn\u2019t deny a marginalized group\u2019s right to visibility because the district feared community backlash.\u00a0\u201cI take my job very seriously,\u201d Rodman wrote, adding, \u201cI will not yield, and I\u2019m not sorry about it.\u201d\u00a0The next day, she was fired. Public records obtained by 404 Media offer insight into Rodman\u2019s dismissal and how the decision reflected poorly on the library. It represents one of hundreds of public records requests filed in jurisdictions in which we\u2019ve received a tip or followed up on incidents of censorship and self-censorship related to LGBTQ+ focused or Pride-related book displays. Records from a handful of public libraries show a willingness from library leadership to tolerate acts of self-censorship in anticipation of unwanted attention from certain community members, and in some cases, religious leaders. This tends to show up in hesitancy to organize cultural heritage programming and LGBTQ+ book displays.\u00a0In a statement to 404 Media, Rodman says that because public libraries are funded through taxpayer dollars, reducing visibility of a marginalized group constitutes a refusal to openly support all patrons.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s never enough to just carry the books as available material,\u201d Rodman told 404 Media. \u201cEveryone deserves and should be able to find themselves publicly represented, but especially in communities where censorship is already such a huge issue. It\u2019s in those communities that minorities of any kind already feel repressed and underrepresented.\u201dIn one email exchange from libraries in east-central Missouri, Crawford County Library District\u2019s director told other area library directors that the firing \u201cwas not discrimination,\u201d but rather, to \u201cprotect\u201d employees and patrons. The situation \u201cdoes look bad,\u201d she wrote, before making it worse by accusing the employee of playing \u201cvictim.\u201d The issue, according to Rodman and the records, was that in 2022, the library tried to host\u00a0 a \u201cRainbow Storytime\u201d event, but canceled it\u00a0 because the library had received death threats.\u00a0\u201cRegardless of whether the library actually instructed the employee to remove the display, we\u2019re in rural Missouri,\u201d Steven Campbell, director of the Scenic Regional Library in Union, Missouri, wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s an extremely challenging political and social environment. We all need to make our own decisions. Not everyone has a Board or appointing authority that will back them on LGBT issues. If someone thinks losing their job or receiving deaths over a display is worth it, that\u2019s great. I admire them. Not everyone is willing to make those sacrifices, and that shouldn\u2019t be judged.\u201d\u00a0Censorship experts and professional associations disagree, but they acknowledge that small and rural libraries have different challenges than their metro-area counterparts. A lot of these systems are very small, with very few salaried staff and limited acquisition budgets. Nor are they discounting the fact that it\u2019s hard to be a librarian right now,\u00a0 thanks in large part to the work of some very well-funded astroturfers. The American Library Association\u2019s Office for Intellectual Freedom found that in 2025, over 90 percent of all book challenges could be linked to pressure groups or key decision-makers like public officials and government employees or library boards or library administrators.\u00a0\u201cWhen a library chooses to engage in censorship-lite out of fear, by just trying to keep the peace and but still do the good work of the library, it\u2019s the patrons who pay the price, no matter what\u201d Kate Laughlin, executive director of the National Association for Rural and Small Libraries, told 404 Media. \u201cIt is the community who is the victim, not the library and the librarians.\u201dIn public records obtained by 404 Media, librarians regularly discussed the challenges they face with their leadership. Some of the things we’ve read include:”I am not calling attention to Pride Month online, but I don’t call attention to other recognized holidays unless it is part of a program… each time that I promote this piece of the collection I have push back from a parent.””If it is in the children’s area, maybe a good compromise would be to move it to another area.””I have made a compromise by taking the time and trouble of changing the wording on the sign that she disapproved… I want to keep the Pride Month display up where it is for 10 more business days. Pride Month ends on June 30 and then it will be taken down.”\u201cEveryone knows the stuff we\u2019re dealing with regarding LGBT issues. It\u2019s no cakewalk for anyone.\u201d\u201cAs a library director in a small town I have had apprehensions about doing outward pride displays in my community.\u201d\u201cMy assumption is that we will get more complaints as Pride month gets underway.\u201dThe American Library Association\u2019s Office for Intellectual Freedom is seeing fewer public Pride displays in libraries this year compared to\u00a0 recent years, citing the chilling effect of censorship.\u201cThere is no obligation to have any display about anything,\u201d Sarah Lamdan, executive director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom told 404 Media. \u201cIt\u2019s all about what a community is interested in. But if somebody thinks that a Pride display might be something that would be appreciated by any member of their community, or they want to put up a Pride display, that shouldn\u2019t be a source of fear or incrimination.\u201d\u00a0Lamdan says there\u2019s a difference between being a library that doesn\u2019t do displays of any kind, and libraries that have done displays in the past who choose not to do them due to external pressure.\u00a0One underexplored throughline here involves religious influence in local politics. CatholicVote, a political action committee that coordinates \u201cHide the Pride\u201d campaigns since 2022, has donated to library defunding campaigns. Over the years, there have been a number of pastors challenging LGBTQ+ collections and displays. Take for instance, an incident that happened in June 2024 in which a local pastor checked out dozens of books from those collections and posted on social media for his congregants to do the same.\u00a0\u00a0Emails obtained by 404 Media from the time of the incident show library workers from neighboring systems who had LGBTQ+ titles wrapped up in the \u201cHide the Pride\u201d-style incident wishing the library hadn\u2019t drawn further attention to the issue through its Facebook channel.\u00a0\u201cPersonally, I think Wichita\u2019s decision to call attention to this on Facebook was a bad idea,\u201d Tom Taylor, director of the Andover Public Library, said in one email to other cc\u2019d library workers. \u201cIt just gives more people the idea.\u201d\u00a0When asked for clarification as to what he meant by \u201cbad idea,\u201d Taylor told 404 Media that states like Kansas have patron privacy laws that protect everyone\u2014including religious leaders\u2014from public borrowing disclosure. He also said that the Andover Public Library doesn\u2019t have any Pride-specific events planned this year, but the library has signs that help users locate frequently challenged books.\u00a0Taylor said that he believes challenged books should still be available to check out, even if they aren\u2019t promoted within the library.\u201cIf you don\u2019t order [the book] because you don\u2019t want to have a controversy, that\u2019s what we call censorship by omission,\u201d he added. \u201cTo avoid buying them because you\u2019re afraid there might be a controversy, that\u2019s not how professional libraries work, in my opinion.\u201d\u00a0Ashley Stewart, a campaign strategist with EveryLibrary Institute, says she can relate to some of the pressure from religious leaders that administrators may be going through. As a former library director for a system in southwestern Illinois, she was on the receiving end of death threats from local ministerial alliances because the library hosted a Drag Queen Story Hour event in 2022 for Pride month.\u201cNo matter where you go in the community, you\u2019re getting\u2014I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s harassment\u2014but people are absolutely letting their feelings be heard that they think that you should not be doing a certain program or not having a certain display,\u201d Stewart told 404 Media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"