6 days ago
Parental Guidance: A new front emerges in battle between far-right, LGBTQ+ themed books
Bill Bolin, left, and members of the Hartland Cromaine District Library Board of Trustees discuss policy at a special meeting on Tuesday, June 3, 2025 | Photo by Ben Solis
Picture, if you will, a library with its books behind a plated glass cabinet, locked and out of reach to patrons of all ages, accessible only upon request to a library employee who has the appropriate key.
Imagine a row of children's books and educational materials, deemed inappropriate or controversial by some, shoved away in an adult's only section – further out of reach than that imaginary cabinet – each with a warning that disseminating those books to a minor could be a crime.
In some cities and townships across Michigan, library officials or the members of boards that oversee them, especially those who have expressed hostility to the LGBTQ+ community, are toying with the idea of making those barriers a reality.
The effort has become a second front, so to speak, in the culture war over children's books and particularly those with LGBTQ+ content or themes.
Much like the battles over prohibiting library books or criminalizing them for minors that have played out over the last few years, activists and attorneys across Michigan have said that similarly sequestering or restricting access to books runs afoul of the First Amendment.
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Jay Kaplan, a long-time staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan staff specializing in LGBTQ+ rights, said in an interview with Michigan Advance that right-wing culture warriors were employing this new tactic because they were losing the overall campaign on outright book bans.
'They're losing in terms of the public opinion, [because] a vast majority of people disfavor this type of thing,' Kaplan said. 'And so they feel, 'We'll just try to move it to another place in the library. We'll try to put a label on it. We'll try and discourage people from being able to take them out.''
But federal courts have looked at the issue, and they have found, Kaplan said, that even when a community is not just removing the book entirely from the library, the act of putting a burden on the First Amendment right to receive information based on content amounted to the same.
'Particulary if what's motivating you to want to limit them is your disapproval of the subject matter of the book, or some of the contents of the book,' he said. 'That also violates the First Amendment.'
For the Hartland Cromaine District Library in Livingston County, the conversation on labeling books started in 2022. Over time and with the election of new library Board of Trustees members, the conversation became much more pointed.
Much of that had to do with the election of Bill Bolin, the pastor of the FloodGate Church in Brighton, and his elevation to the president of the Cromaine District Library board in January. Bolin and his church have been written about by various publications, including The Atlantic's Tim Alberta, detailing Bolin's mixture of right-wing conspiratorial politics and Christianity. Bolin also features throughout Alberta's 2023 book, 'The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.'
Some board members questioned Bolin's experience and qualifications for running the library board in a breezy rural district just before he was selected as its leader in January. But the board voted 5-2 to install him at the top.
In February, Bolin, as the congregants of the FloodGate Church know him to do, began to speak out of order to introduce himself and detail exactly why it was that he sought the library board position and its leadership post, according to the approved minutes of the board's February 20 meeting.
'For those who do not know why I ran for this position, I desire to protect children from the harm that can befall them over coercive behavior,' Bolin said in a statement to the crowd. 'The approach I am suggesting, along with certain colleagues, is a commonsense approach to changing the sexual tone and nature of some library policies and practices.'
Bolin said that the board would then discuss controversial items on the agenda, including the removal of June LGBTQ+ Pride displays, labeling certain books that may be deemed controversial, moving books to an age restricted area, providing supervision in the teen area to monitor 'behavior' and returning the Pledge of Allegiance to monthly meetings.
Bolin then read from Michigan law regarding the displaying or disseminating of sexually explicit materials to minors, followed by a recitation of a potential warning label he had created warning adults of the dangers of providing such material to children.
But Bolin wasn't talking about dirty magazines in a seedy retail store: he was talking about books within the community's public library.
'Someone needs to stand up for the children,' Bolin said. 'Those who serve on the library board and want to implement policies that restrict access to certain books and place content warning labels will be able to enact policies that reflect the community in which they serve the people of Cromaine Library District, either tonight by vote or later after referral to the appropriate committee for refinement of language and crafting of policies that state intention of the people.'
Bolin added that a list of books that could be recommended for labeling was being compiled with at least 80 titles, minimum, to be presented to the librarian 'for labeling and movement into an age-appropriate section of the library.'
Members of the community present at the February 20 meeting noted that the Top 10 challenged books in that list had LGBTQ+ characters or themes. Some questioned if the board had the legal authority to deem what was and wasn't sexual in nature about these books, while others praised the move.
Among the latter was Livingston County Commissioner Wes Nakagiri, one of the architects of the conservative Tea Party movement in Michigan, which undoubtedly built the framework of the America First and MAGA movement that propelled President Donald Trump to power in 2016 and again in 2024.
A day before that meeting, on February 19, the board sought and received a legal opinion from its corporate counsel at the Foster Swift law firm on whether it could move forward with restricting access to books or otherwise discouraging minor patrons from getting to them.
In a memo provided to Michigan Advance, the law firm expressed concern that the library would be on shaky constitutional ground if it moved forward with a policy that would move books to an adult-only section, placing them behind glass, creating a separate section for controversial books or placing on them labels identifying them as obscene.
The firm said each one of those actions might be unconstitutional based on similar policies already deemed unconstitutional by the courts.
Although each of those actions came with significant risk of opening the library up to a lawsuit, the move to place warning labels on books indicating sexually explicit content and the possibility of criminal prosecution if the material was provided to a minor was noted as having 'several practical shortcomings that could lead to further violations of the law.'
Not only would the labels constitute a burden on access to materials, the firm said courts would undoubtedly analyze the motives behind labeling some materials and not others. The firm added that the library would likely lose that challenge.
Some community members have noted that communications between board members and residents or allies in the push to have some books labeled would only help a suing party win a case against the library.
'For example, if the 'sexually explicit material' labels tended to stigmatize protected speech or one viewpoint more heavily than another, like anti-LBGTQ+ messages vs. pro-LBGTQ+ messages, the library may be subject to liability,' the firm said in the February legal memo. 'Lastly, we note that there is current litigation in federal court involving an Alabama library's use of 'labels' that signaled that a material contained 'adult' themes and the library's prohibition on minors accessing those materials. In that case, the parties are awaiting a hearing and/or decision on the plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction.'
Yet Bolin and members of the board who supported the push continued on, and eventually sought a separate opinion from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group that works primarily to seed Christian religious beliefs, practices and customs in public schools or other government bodies.
Bolin eventually brought a refined version of the proposed policy with labeling as the main avenue to keep LGBTQ+ themed and other materials deemed inappropriate to library staff and the board with notes from ADF attorney Paul Spena. Bolin was wary to name Spena as the attorney he was now working with to craft the policy but later relented when pressed on the issue.
When asked to talk about the legal theory behind the labels and what case law they could point to show that it was legally sound, Spena and the ADF declined to comment or be interviewed for this story.
Letter to Board of Trustees
The ACLU of Michigan formally chimed in on the policy last week, and sent the board a letter drafted by Kaplan warning members that what they were pursuing was an act of censorship, even if the titles are not banned from the library and remain within its walls, located in special sections or with new labels affixed to the covers.
'Doing so impedes the rights of library patrons and runs afoul of the First Amendment,' Kaplan wrote. 'It can also harm marginalized communities who may come to places like public libraries hoping for an inclusive space, and in this particular instance, doing so with regard to LGBTQ+ titles will exacerbate that harm.'
Several community members who spoke to Michigan Advance in the course of reporting this story said that Bolin and his allies on the board were moving closer to adopting the policy despite those warnings, in essence inviting a lawsuit to be pioneers on the issue here in Michigan. Among them was Stand Against Extremism LivCo (SAGE) co-founder Julie Ohashi, who has been vocal in her opposition to the board's actions thus far.
On Tuesday evening, Spena was expected to speak at the library board's special meeting to discuss the policy in full. No such discussion with Spena or another attorney from the ADF occurred, and it was not clear if Spena or another member of the group were present at the meeting.
Bolin mentioned, however, that the legal discourse was changing in America, indicating that courts in the era of Trump might be turning the tide to support measures much like the one being discussed by the Cromaine District Library board.
Present at the meeting, however, were several community members, some in support of Bolin and the board's majority on the label issue and plenty of others who said they were disheartened, dismayed and angry that the board would continue moving toward a policy they called discriminatory and clearly illegal.
As the board moved through the policy line by line, softening it due to objections from several board members out of fear of being sued and settling more on labeling as the possible avenue, those opposed to the move held signs calling on the board to not mix religion and politics. But those silent protests quickly turned vocal, with shouts and jeers rising above the din of what started as a calm meeting.
Board Vice President Jeannine Gogoleski was appointed as the sergeant at arms for the meeting, and she and her husband, Glenn Gogoleski, a member of the Hartland Consolidated Schools Board of Education, began removing disruptive members of the meeting.
Tensions rose further when the Livingston County Sheriff's Office was called to ensure there were no further outbursts. The meeting went into recess until deputies could sort out the situation, and they remained there until it ended.
Although the board did not adopt a policy on Tuesday, it is expected to do so at its next meeting.
During public comment, some read lengthy diatribes laden with Christian scripture, while others lambasted the board inviting what they called a hate group to give the board legal advice and defend them if they are forced into court. One woman held up Alberta's book while speaking, noting that Bolin's name appeared in it multiple times, to which Bolin smiled.
Ohashi called ADF a 'hate group' that has described LGBTQ+ rights as a principal threat to religious freedom, and attacking those rights was at the center of their work.
'Their goal is to trigger as many lawsuits that can get to the U.S. Supreme Court as fast as possible,' she said. 'That is precisely the point. They want this to go to court, because ADF's ultimate goal is eliminating LGBTQ+ Americans' status as a protected class of citizens.'
Kate Mazzara of Hartland said she feared that the nation was tiptoeing toward religious fascism and that the small district library in her hometown was sliding on the same path.
'Make no mistake about it, that's what this is,' Mazara said. 'It starts with baby steps, and then it's over.'
