Complaints that the Lancaster Public Library is out of touch with community standards.
Calls for the county commissioners to get involved and, if the library fails to change course, to withhold funding.
Only this isn’t another story about the Drag Queen Story Hour the library scheduled for last month only to see it canceled when two bomb sniffing K-9s reacted to a suspicious package
This particular library controversy dates back to Dec. 2, 1996.
That day, nearly 30 years ago, the since-disbanded Pink Triangle Coalition installed an exhibit in the window of the library’s former North Duke Street home that read: “Celebrating lesbian, gay and bisexual stars.” The display contained nine portraits, including Lancaster artist Charles Demuth, Andy Warhol, singer Bessie Smith and writer and civil rights activist Bayard Ruskin.
Four days later, after getting between 15 to 20 complaints from people saying they were offended, the library’s director took the display down. Complaints were also made to the county commissioners.
The controversy prompted the library to review whether the display violated its policy on displays by outside organizations and whether the library should revise its policy on hosting outside exhibits. That policy provided free exhibit space to nonprofit groups for “cultural, civic, and formal and informal educational purposes only.”
Pink Triangle Coalition
In a news story published by an LNP|LancasterOnline predecessor publication,
Anthony Lascoskie, co-chair of the Pink Triangle Coalition,was quoted as saying: “We did not think this was going to be very controversial. This is portraits of people. It’s in history books that these people existed and were gay. It’s purely factual.”
On Friday, Lascoskie, 56, who still lives in Lancaster and is the costume shop manager for the Fulton Theatre, said he had an “it’s deja vu all over again” moment when the public outcry over the drag story hour started last month.
“As much as everything changes, it still stays the same,” Lascoskie said. “I thought we had cleared up this misconception that a window or event that you don’t have to go to doesn’t hurt you.”
At a Dec. 16, 1996, library meeting, Mark Stoner, who helped design and install the display, said, “The discrimination and persecution faced by lesbian and gay people has worked as a strong oxidant which bleaches the pages of history clean of the contributions made by millions of lesbian and gay citizens. The reaction to this window alone should serve as strong evidence of the virulence with which certain groups react to any display perceived as showing les-bi-gay people in a positive light.”
On Thursday, Stoner, 64, a graphic designer at Hospice & Community Care, said the drag queen controversy also took him back to the window display.
“There has been change and there hasn’t been change,” he said. “In some ways, the gay issue has calmed down and certain politicians feel they can’t say anything, so they use drag and trans as fodder.”
While most of the roughly 150 people at the December 1996 meeting supported returning the display to the library’s front window, Peggie Miller, an anti-pornography activist, said she was concerned the display could open the door to other groups that she said advocate child sexual abuse.
She said the display “offended the community at large.”
Miller asked the commissioners to withhold more than $1 million in funding for the library until the matter was resolved, though they did not.
Sensitive to community concerns
Paul Thibault, 76, who was one of the commissioners in 1996, said Friday he vaguely recalled the window issue.
But he said it “brought up the situation that’s in play now — any entity that seeks public funding … has to be sensitive to community concerns,” and a drag show was “de facto controversial… Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
He described the window display issue as a “kerfuffle” and said the commissioners at the time felt the library was so important to the community that it deserved funding.
Ultimately, the library board found the display did meet its policy. But in a nod to opponents, it recommended that the exhibit be displayed in the library’s second floor meeting room.
Donald W. Western, a member of what was then the Lancaster branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the library board that relegating the exhibit to a second-floor meeting room “can only evoke the image that homosexuality is being pushed back in the closet by the library.”
East Hempfield supervisors hope to reach agreement with Lancaster library, resume funding Mountville branch
Not returning the display to the front window prompted board member Evelyn Lyons to resign.
“We had a policy, and everyone agreed that the window display fit the policy. And yet we chose, for political reasons or whatever, to remove that display,” Lyons said.
Miller, Western and Lyons have all died. The director of the library at the time moved to take a job in Maine and could not be located.
The Rev. Mary Merriman, another person who favored returning the display to the front window and who spoke at the December 1996 library meeting, said Friday the drag queen controversy reminded her of the struggle to bring the Vision of Hope Metropolitan Community Church to Mountville in 1993 and of which she was its pastor. The church, which is still in Mountville, welcomed gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
“It sounds like we are going through a cycle again,” said Merriman, 74. “By that I mean, LGBTQ people have not been out of the target zone for very long. For almost 50 years, we have seen our community be targeted again and again and again.”
While the library was trying to increase inclusivity and tolerance by agreeing to host the drag queen story hour, Merriman said the two commissioners’ opposition was an example of politicians riling up their base.
But, she said, she’s also seen change. An example she cited: Embrace Lancaster, an interfaith group that assists individuals and faith groups to create a welcoming environment, and now lists about 35 Lancaster County churches as open and affirming.
