Commission disrespects conservatives

By John Labriola - Citrus County leaders disrespected the county's overwhelmingly conservative voters on Tuesday by kicking a staunchly conservative member off the Library Advisory Board (LAB). 

Sitting in their capacity as the Library Governing Body to make annual appointments to the LAB, commissioners took the highly unusual step of removing Elaine Kleid, a vocal critic of LGBT grooming materials who was first appointed to the LAB in 2019. Joining the commission was Inverness City Councilwoman Crystal Lizanich, a liberal Democrat who demanded that Kleid be removed. The Crystal River City Council’s representative was absent. (The Library Governing Body consists of the five county commissioners plus one representative each from the two city councils.)

LAB members who seek reappointment are rarely removed. Last year, former LAB members Neale Brennan and April McLaughlin were booted off at Commissioner Diana Finegan’s request for repeatedly pushing the LGBT agenda. Liberal Commissioner Holly Davis had strenuously opposed their removal, but this time she fully supported removing a conservative. Finegan said she disagreed with removing Kleid, but she was outnumbered.

The board only reappointed one conservative: Chairman Justin Strickland, along with one middle-of-the-road LAB member, Lorraine Benefield. The board also appointed two new members: Rhys Campbell, a network engineer at Verizon Wireless and father of three who introduced himself at the meeting, and Katie Myers, the director of communications at HCA Florida Citrus Hospital. Myers, a registered Democrat, was recommended by Lizanich.

The vote came after about a dozen residents turned out to passionately urge the board to reappoint Kleid and Strickland and to also appoint myself to keep the LGBT agenda out of the libraries. Only two residents spoke on the other side. 

The board’s decision angered residents who showed up.

“You’re supposed to represent the people. The majority of the people of this county are conservative, Republican, family values,” said Jeff Burke, the pastor at Solid Rock Church in Inverness. “I’m very saddened by what I'm seeing here because you’re not representing what the people of this county want.”

The board’s rejection of conservative applicants to the library board came just two months after the majority of the LAB voted to affirm Library Services Director Adam Chang’s decision to keep over 20 LGBT grooming books in the library’s juvenile and teen collections after a citizen challenged them. Only one of those books, “Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts)” was publicly removed after Finegan objected to its pornographic content at a commission meeting. 

At the meeting, Gill Phelan of Lecanto brought up one of those challenged books, "Be Amazing: A History of Pride.”

“Now this is for 7- to 9-year-olds and it’s all about a ‘drag kid,’” Phelan said. “It’s a kid-friendly primer to queer history and celebrates RuPaul and why children need to fight for queer rights. What is that doing in our library? That’s not liberal or conservative. That’s sick.”

Phelan said it's ironic that the Citrus County Library System is still following the LGBT agenda when President Donald Trump has signed several exectutive orders abolishing it at the federal level. 

Chang, who addressed the board during the meeting, was criticized aftewards for wearing what appeared to be a rainbow-colored lanyard.

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