Feel-Good Victories – with a Warning

It’s no secret that I have concerns over the effort of organised religion to exert an influence over the lives of everyone else. This is the mindset that’s all-too-typical of the religious, conservative right. They operate out of a belief that people must conform to the whim of a specific religious belief.

This is the case across many different avenues of life, and it’s not without irony that some of the biggest complainers of the ‘selfishness’ of ‘unbelievers’ are the ones of the religious right, who want nothing more than to force their beliefs upon everyone else. Sometimes they end up in positions to try, despite (in some parts of the world at least) their efforts actually falling foul of the law. Take one Gene McGee, the mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi. McGee holds deep Christian convictions and he used these convictions to withhold vital funding from the Madison County Library System. He would only release the funds if they agreed to remove LGBT+ material from their resources.

As McGee is a public servant and charged with being responsible for all the people living under his jurisdiction (not just Christians or the religious right) it is clear he is failing to meet his duty.

From the link:

Tonja Johnson, executive director for the Madison County Library System, told the Mississippi Free Press in an afternoon interview that she first reached out to Mayor McGee after failing to receive the City of Ridgeland’s first quarterly payment of 2022.

Johnson said the mayor informed her that no payment was forthcoming. “He explained his opposition to what he called ‘homosexual materials’ in the library, that it went against his Christian beliefs, and that he would not release the money as the long as the materials were there,” the library director said.

The director then explained to the mayor that the library system, as a public entity, was not a religious institution. “I explained that we are a public library and we serve the entire community. I told him our collection reflects the diversity of our community,” Johnson said.

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/20068/ridgeland-mayor-demands-lgbtq-book-purge-threatens-library-funding/

As Ms Johnson made clear, the library is there to serve the needs of the entire community, not merely one specific corner of it. McGee’s response was typical of fundamentalists:

Apparently, the mayor was unmoved. “He told me that the library can serve whoever we wanted, but that he only serves the great Lord above,” she finished.

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/20068/ridgeland-mayor-demands-lgbtq-book-purge-threatens-library-funding/

Again, I’ll remark on the irony of the religious ‘sparring partners’ I’ve had lamenting about the selfishness of non-believers, when we have a public official abusing his position to force everyone else to abide by his private religious beliefs. Fortunately he was opposed, by more than one community, who rallied around the call of Soatok. Hence why I refer to this as a ‘feel-good’ story, unlike a lot of posts. The drive to defy the mayor’s illegal withholding of funds ended with citizens not just from the local area and not just from the USA raising enough cash to make up the shortfall of money.

It should not be down to such fund-raising, but it’s an indication that when religious fundamentalists try to bully other communities, those communities are capable of fighting back and defying them. I think we can all take a bit of inspiration from that.