July 2025, Politicized pastor seeks library limits to ‘protect children’
Baptist News Global Reports ““For those who do not know why I ran for this position, I desire to protect children from the harm that can befall them over coercive behavior,” Bolin told the crowd. “The approach I am suggesting, along with certain colleagues, is a commonsense approach to changing the sexual tone and nature of some library policies and practices.”
Bolin seeks numerous changes. He wants to make some books inaccessible to children, to require supervision in libraries’ teen areas, to limit adults’ access to others by storing them in locked cabinets or adding warning labels, and to open the district’s meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. He also wanted to remove June Pride displays from libraries. . .
At a special meeting, the library district’s legal counsel said some of Bolin’s proposed changes already had been instituted in schools elsewhere in the U.S. and had promptly inspired legal challenges. Counsel warned that Bolin’s changes could make the district vulnerable to costly lawsuits from people claiming the district was burdening people’s First Amendment rights.
Bolin rejected their advice, turning instead to Alliance Defending Freedom, the powerful Christian legal group that has won Supreme Court cases on same-sex weddings and helped write the law that led to Roe v. Wade being overturned. ADF encouraged Bolin to pursue the measures, helped him tweak his proposal and will be ready to defend his actions if the board is sued.
One critic of Bolin’s plan warned that Bolin and ADF would savor a lawsuit on the measures.
“Their goal is to trigger as many lawsuits that can get to the U.S. Supreme Court as fast as possible,” said Julie Ohashi of the group Stand Against Extremism based in Livingston County. “That is precisely the point. They want this to go to court, because ADF’s ultimate goal is eliminating LGBTQ Americans’ status as a protected class of citizens.”