A few weeks back, I got an odd phone call from a politically connected reader who wanted me to stop referring to the Augusta County Board of Supervisors as being all-MAGA, swearing to me that three of the board members aren’t MAGA, and don’t like being labeled so.
The moratorium on calling them what they are is over.
“The Augusta County Board of Supervisors, the Augusta County Library Board and county administration were not informed in advance of the planned Library Pride Day program and only became aware of it recently. The Board of Supervisors determined that additional vetting and consideration of the event was warranted and felt it best to cancel the event.”
That was the mealy-mouthed PR response that we got back after our regional editor, Crystal Graham, reached out individually to all seven members of the Board of Supervisors to inquire as to why the county had decided, at the last minute, to cancel a planned Pride event at the Augusta County Library scheduled for this week.
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
Whoever the three supposed non-MAGA BOS members are, they had the opportunity to break from the pack on the heavy-handed move to outright cancel the Pride event, which, let’s be honest, wasn’t going to be the first item on the evening news if it had gone on as scheduled.
It might have made for a feature piece during the human-interest portion of the newscast, between weather and sports, if it made the news at all.
Otherwise, you may have seen a few dozen people from the local LGBTQ+ community there, turnout limited by the event going on largely during the business day on a Monday.
It would have come and gone, and 99.5 percent of you wouldn’t have known.
Can you say, “Streisand Effect”?
I mean, sure, we all know the issue.
What the library was trying to do is – gasp! – inclusive.
Bad word there, inclusive.
Polling and Census figures tell us that around 9 percent of the U.S. population identifies as LGBTQ+, so, in Augusta County, we’re talking about roughly 7,000 people who are LGBTQ+, and if you factor in the two cities, maybe 12,000 total in the region.
I’m trying to figure out what is so controversial about putting on a public program for this long-marginalized roughly one-tenth of our population that it would require “additional vetting and consideration,” aside from the obvious.
On the one hand, 9 percent of the local population is LGBTQ+; on the other, 70 percent of the local population voted for Donald Trump for president last year.
And among the reasons a lot of those folks voted for Donald Trump: they want to be able to pretend that LGBTQ+ people don’t exist, like people did back in the 1950s.
Because two or three of these people called their Board of Supervisors member to complain, the library had to abruptly cancel its Pride program, which, according to a flyer promoting the event, was to include 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, laser tag.
You know, subversive stuff.
Organizations that were set to take part in the event included the Mary Baldwin University Gender and Sexuality Alliance Club, Shenandoah LGBTQ Center, People Places, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Waynesboro, the Virginia Library Association LGBTQIA+ Forum, Project Horizon, New Directions, Valley Community Services Board and UVA Gender Health Clinic.
Businesses that had been advertised as participating in the Pride Day included Northwestern Mutual, Buzz Cut Books, The Beautiful Idea, Heard The Store, The Matriarchists and Skye Raine, a community resource navigator.
That’s a wide base of community support and involvement, which should be a plus, if you’re a member of the Board of Supervisors.
Instead, our MAGAs in control of county government decided to treat the widespread support that was there for the Pride Month program as a threat.
But that’s what MAGA is all about, isn’t it?
America is changing for the better, with most of us understanding that living well isn’t a zero-sum game, and that we’re all better off if we can all be the best that we can be; but the backwards-focused among us are fighting like hell, because they’ve bought the lie that another person doing well means, necessarily, that they’ll do less well.
That’s a shame, but the bigger shame is people in leadership positions who want you to think they know better, and still cave to a couple of ignorant people giving them grief.
Cowards.
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Chris Graham
