Texans Form Free-Speech Group
to Back Beleaguered Library
Some Texans who are angered by the September 23 removal from the Montgomery County Library of two children’s-level sex-education books have formed a grassroots organization called Mainstream Montgomery County. Three days after its September 27 launch, the group attracted more than 100 people to two meetings against the ban and in favor of a $10-million library bond on the November 5 ballot.
Mainstream Montgomery County states its mission as fighting “the imposition through public policy of one religious tradition over others.” Its Web site goes on to blast the Republican Leadership Council of Montgomery County for leading a “crusade to rid the county of things which conflict with [the RLC’s] beliefs or tastes,” and characterizes the controversy over the two gay-positive Robie H. Harris books as a “smokescreen” to defeat the bond.
Montgomery County RLC President Jim Jenkins dismissed Mainstream Montgomery as “very, very liberal Democrats” who are “upset about the movement of the Republican Party in the county,” according to the September 28 Houston Chronicle. However, Republican County Chairman Wally Wilkerson said in the October 2 Chronicle that there seemed to be “a groundswell of support for the bond issue and against book banning.”
Posted October 7, 2002.
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