Credit goes here to Butch Wells, member of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, for calling me today to address head-on the controversial cancellation of a planned Pride Month event at the Augusta County Library that had been scheduled for this past Monday.
Before we talked on the phone, Wells, who also outed himself to me in an email ahead of the phone call as one of the three members of the BOS who don’t like being called MAGAs, made it clear that he wasn’t fond of the characterization from my article on the cancellation from Tuesday in which I referred to county leaders as “cowards” in the aftermath of the Pride Month fiasco.
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I’m trying to give Wells some credit here – it’s not easy in Augusta County politics to actively resist having someone label you MAGA, or to break formation from a Board of Supervisors that likes to speak, as much as possible, with one voice, to reveal discussions that went on behind the scenes on a controversial issue.
As much I’m trying to give Wells credit, though, the explanation for how things went down last week on this doesn’t put anybody involved in the decision to pull the plug on the Pride Month event in a positive light.
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The way Wells explained it to me, he wasn’t aware of the Pride Month event until “late Wednesday” of last week, so, on June 11.
To be clear: AFP had published a story detailing Pride Month events planned across the area a week earlier, on June 4, that included a listing of the event at the Augusta County Library.
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So, a state secret, it was not.
“One of the board members called me about it, and I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m vice chair. So, I immediately got on phone and called the chairman, I said, Tell me about this thing that’s going on at the library. Nothing. He knew nothing about it,” Wells said.
Interjecting here: I’ve submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the county to try to get access to any email or text correspondence between BOS members and the county administration on the planned event at the library.
Wells, on more than one occasion in our phone call today, referred to the matter as a “personnel matter,” so I imagine that the lawyers are going to try to stiff me on the FOIA request by claiming some exemption that clearly shouldn’t apply, and dare me to take them to court.
Which I’ve done before, and reserve the right to do again.
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The issue with the event to Wells, a retired police officer and former chief of police in the City of Staunton, is the “possibilities of something going wrong or something going bad.”
“Has nothing to do with the LBGT community, from my perspective, other than the fact that it is a hot button topic, not just in our area, but all over the place, and all over the state, all over the country, and we also know that it goes beyond local people anymore to try to maybe do something of a violent nature. People are driving 50 miles, 75 miles, 100 miles, even farther, to create trouble at an event of this type,” Wells said.
It sounded here, as we talked, that Wells was saying, the library shouldn’t have a Pride Month event because LGBTQ+ hate groups from outside the area might drive here to commit acts of violence.
I pressed him on that.
“Our society, and you know, ever since the election, our whole country, has changed dramatically, dramatically. It’s not what it used to be two years ago,” Wells said. “Now, I’m not going to get into the politics of who got elected or who was the president before, and all that stuff, but things have gotten in such a volatile stage that you’ve got to be sure, or try to be as sure as you can, to include as many people in the planning for an event that could go south real quick, in order to ensure the safety of not only the participants, but bystanders who might happen by.”
So, it was concern that the event might attract violent actors.
People with bad intentions and guns might show up, so, cancel the event.
ICYMI
- Augusta County: Pride Day at county library cancelled by Board of Supervisors
- ‘Not outside of their purview’: Augusta County defends move to cancel library’s Pride Day
- LGBTQ center steps in after Augusta County leaders cancel library Pride event
“I mean, I guess it’s the old police officer in me coming out,” Wells said. “I was often accused of, hey, you’re over overreacting, and OK, well, you can accuse me of that. But if something goes south, and I don’t have the people here, or have the feedback to have handled this correctly, then it’ll come back to me. And so, you can criticize me all you want to for being overly cautious, but you’ll never be able to criticize me for not being prepared.”
Wells said, as he learned more about the event planning, he was concerned that the library staff had not contacted the sheriff, Donald Smith, to coordinate in the event that there would be violence.
Now, to be fair there, I’m not sure, myself, that it should occur to a library director planning an event advertised as featuring a name change station, board and video game room, craft room, red carpet photo booth, collaborative splatter art, melted crayon art, mocktails, a cookie swap, a movie screening and laser tag to also consider the possibility that hate groups might want to use that innocent and benign backdrop for a mass shooting.
“If nothing else, pick up the phone and check with the sheriff,” Wells said. “I checked with the sheriff, I checked with his chief deputy, I said, Did either one of you guys get a call about this? Nope, nothing. I said, OK, OK, that’s fine.”
Again, AFP reported on the event a week ahead of Wells getting a call from an unnamed BOS member with whatever the concerns were.
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It seems to me, after talking with Wells, that what happened here was, the library proceeded as it normally would with planning the event, and somebody who has a political axe to grind with the LGBTQ+ community got the attention of the right people in county leadership circles to get the event canceled.
I don’t doubt that Wells, as a former police chief, thinks there could be security issues to be addressed, but there’s an easy solution there – if the concern about the need for security was identified on Wednesday night, and the event was scheduled for the following Monday, five days later, I don’t know, maybe work with the sheriff’s office to assign a deputy to be on hand?
Instead, the call was made on Thursday to outright cancel the event.
“I guess I’d rather err on the side of safety, and if I make people mad, I make people mad,” Wells said. “I’m open-minded, and what we did was not about that issue, although it looks now like, you know, it has been turned into that issue. That’s not what it was. It all centers around the planning and the development of the program and whatnot, and the fact that we didn’t even know about it.”
Wells, I should note here, is wrapping up second four-year term on the Board of Supervisors, and is on the ballot, unopposed, for a seat on the Augusta County School Board in the November elections.
I appreciate him going into detail to explain the thinking behind the cancellation, but man, it seems flimsy – almost like an excuse being disguised as a reason.
Not casting aspersions there, by the way.
I think the county dropped the ball on this, and my view on that was only reinforced after talking with Wells.
“It’s not on me to say hey, we made a goof. If we made a goof, we put it behind us. We reform or write a policy, right, whatever we’ve got to do to correct this,” Wells said. “But we’ve got to make sure if something like this is submitted in the future, that it goes smooth. And if in the future, if it’s determined that the way society is that, if we have a Black History Month event, if the county would have that, hey, let’s sit down and talk about to make sure we’re doing the best we can to make things safe for everybody.”
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Chris Graham
