Instructions
Here’s how to “Hide the Pride!”
- Edit the letter template below by adding your local information, including the name of your library, your library board’s information (email or mailing address), and your contact information
- Gather signatures for your letter
- Plan a visit in early June to your library with five or six other signatories (not every person who signs needs to attend, but we suggest you take along some friends)
- If possible, assign one person from your group to be on the ready to film for the duration of your time at the library, in case any staff give you trouble
- Go to the children’s section and take all “Pride Month” books off of the display shelves
- Check them out at the front desk
- Deliver your letter via email or snail mail to the library board
- Go home and place the Pride books on a shelf out of reach of children
- Send your videos, photos, and stories to CatholicVote to help us encourage others! It is always powerful to know you are not alone in this fight for the soul of our children
- Return your library books on time
TIPS:
- Check your library’s policy on checking out books first – we want to follow the letter of the law, so to speak
- Some books pushing eroticism and trans ideology might be on the shelves – check out our list of the worst offenders and find out if your library has them
- Stay calm and collected – this is not a sit-in or march. Most of all, it is not a debate. You don’t have to make your case or get into arguments. If questioned, you might simply say you are local residents with library cards checking out books. That’s your right.
Letter to send to your library
Date
Library Name
Address
To the Board,
As taxpayers in the city of ______________ and longtime library patrons, we are writing to protest the ‘Pride Month’ display in the children’s section of the __________________ Public Library.
To protect our children and the community, we have checked out the books in the pride display. We plan to keep these books checked out until the library agrees to remove the inappropriate content from the shelves.
Flags, signs, and book displays based on how adults experience sexual attraction and gender identity have no place in an open and public space for children.
We believe that minor children have the right to belong to a community that respects their innocence and allows families to have conversations about sex and sexual attraction privately, and only when parents deem it appropriate.
As parents, we should be able to bring our children to the public library without exposing them to displays of adult pride.
We ask you to immediately take down your “Pride Month” displays, starting with those placed in children’s and young adults’ sections.
It’s time for the American public libraries to once again be a respectful space for young children to freely explore great ideas that unite and inspire us all, rather than places where controversial and divisive new ideological movements are given free rein to promote their theories and policy positions about sexuality to children without the consent or notification of parents.
Respectfully,
Lead Contact:
Name, City
Phone
Add additional signatories here with Name and City
CC:
Library Board Members (if names, emails available)