People in this western Michigan farming town said the Patmos Library was “grooming” children and, according to fliers that one group printed, promoting an “LGBTQ ideology.”

The vitriol in Jamestown spiked with the rise of groups campaigning across the United States to banish texts with LGBTQ characters, accusing authors, teachers and librarians of trying to brainwash the nation’s youth.

—The Washington Post

My name is Ida Clunn and I am a proud, semi-retired librarian. I say “semi-retired” because, while I no longer work at a library, I continue to shush people. At theaters, at funerals, in waiting rooms at hospitals, I demand silence, unleashing my often terrifying signature shush. I recently shushed my six-month-old, ill-mannered great-grandson, much to my daughter-in-law’s horror. It had to be done and he was instantly quiet. My shush is akin to a supernatural power. Scientists have studied my shush.

Librarian is a most honorable profession, as it encompasses the encouragement of our nation’s youth to read more books, introducing our nation’s young readers to the world’s greatest, most tedious literature, promoting diverse, often obscure texts, and, most importantly, conditioning the next generation to become the spectacular homosexuals they were born to be. You go, girl—quietly.

My fellow administrators-slash-curators and I are exhaustively committed to indoctrinating America’s children by stocking the shelves of this country’s libraries with influential works of gay fiction, gay nonfiction, and a relatively new category, gay science fiction, which includes stories about imagined technological breakthroughs, futuristic existences and fanciful universes, like Edward Walker’s “Chic City,” about life on the planet Todd, where homosexual men all have extraordinarily high metabolisms, all live in renovated rent-stabilized duplex apartments, and, although they all earn less than eight-five thousand dollars a year, all own multiple pairs of Gucci loafers and several Brioni cashmere sweaters, which is never explained—as well as Thomas Bailey’s “Versatile,” which concerns a bisexual cyborg named Chase who genuinely enjoys sex with both men and women and genuinely enjoys sex as both a dominant and a submissive, as he cruises an apocalyptic Key West. Although Chase is half robot with improbably perfect artificial facial features, he’s a wonderful inspiration to adolescent boys who dream of eventually morphing into Matt Bomer.  

My formidable colleague, Enid Fishwick, is devoted to shaping the minds of middle school girls, introducing them to lesbian alternatives to Judy Blume’s young adult novels, like Eudora Vogel’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Drag King” and Miriam Meyer’s “Are You There Ellen? It’s Me, Maddie.”

My dear friend and librarian extraordinaire, Harriet Heddle, refuses to stock Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” or “The Old Man and the Sea” because she feels the Nobel Prize winner’s work is unduly red-blooded.  She chooses, instead, to provide high school students with homophile Hemingway replacements, like Blake Quill’s “A Farewell to Carbs,” about Fitzhugh Henri, an aging choreographer determined to lose fifteen pounds before his friend Derek’s Memorial Day party on Fire Island, where he hopes to find Jeremy, a handsome twenty-six-year-old flight attendant who might finally be interested in him for his body and not his cocaine, although Fitzhugh plans to bring plenty of cocaine—along with Patrick Showell’s acclaimed novella concerning Phillip Culpepper, an eighty-four-year-old opera aficionado, living alone in a beautifully appointed Upper West Side alcove studio, whom we’re introduced to after he’s spent the last three weeks without the pleasure of his treasured recordings, denying himself Callas, Pavarotti, Tebaldi, Domingo, endeavoring to placate his new neighbor, Caitlyn, a heartless thirty-three-year-old remote account executive who would regularly berate him for playing his music too loud, demanding that he use earbuds, although Phillip had repeatedly explained to her that he listens to vinyl records played on a restored antique Victrola from the early twentieth century, to which Caitlyn ultimately responded, “Well it’s time to grow the fuck up and download Spotify, freak,” cleverly titled “The Old Queen and the C.”  

For a period of time, my primary focus was converting impressionable boys by offering to overlook late fees if only they were willing to attempt an impression of Bette Davis. I remember, the year was Two Thousand and Five and one particularly facetious, hopelessly heterosexual fourteen-year-old frat boy-in-training, Kevin Carter, stood on my desk and proudly exclaimed à la Davis: “What a dump—I’m about to take!” Naturally, Kevin now manages a hedge fund.  

But what I most loved was hosting children’s story time on Saturdays, embracing and inspiring our littlest learners.  Among my favorite fairy tales and fables that I’ve had the great pleasure of reading aloud to those enthusiastic tykes are: “The Three Little Pig Bottoms,” “Provincetown and the Three Bears,” and Domenico Cattaneo’s reimagining of the Italian classic, “Pinocchio,” titled “Pinfirio,” a heartwarming fantasy about an affected marionette who dreams of one day becoming a real, flesh-and-blood event planner.

We librarians have dedicated our lives to bringing highly susceptible youngsters more and more examples of literary virtuosity—dry, up, with a twist. We will stop at nothing, except maybe a fire drill, in our attempt to propagandize and reeducate juveniles and kiddies, one book at a time. Shhhh…