“We weren’t against the reading program itself at all,” asserted Pastor David Gallamore in the June 6 Greenville News. He acknowledged telling parishioners of the Rock Springs Baptist Church in Easley, South Carolina, about PCLS’s mystery-and-suspense-themed “You Never Know @ your library” summer series and his objections to horoscopes and Tarot cards being part of the June 14 “What’s Your Sign?” evening. “We just want our children being taught the right things,” he added.
The controversial activities were among those suggested by the Collaborative Summer Library Program for Highsmith’s prepackaged 2007 summer reading program, which has garnered participation from libraries in 40 states.
According to Keenan, the teen summer programming traditionally draws a few youngsters from Pickens County’s population of 110,000 overall. However, the 2007 program might have seen an upward spike: Media Specialist Christina Connell of the Gettys Middle School in Easley told American Libraries that she had “pitched it” to the 1,400 students at her campus, which is two blocks from PCLS’s Hampton branch, and that “they were really excited about it.” Connell went on to contend that the library is “sending the wrong message to teens, who will feel that they are not important enough to fight for, and to the church groups, who will only be empowered to launch further crusades against books.”
“Maybe I was taking a worst-case-scenario approach,” Keenan reflected, “but to me the safety of the children we invite in here to our summer programs—the elementary schoolchildren and the preschoolers—is very, very important.”
June 8, 2007.