Dear Friends,
The Kennebunk Free Library cancelled our ATOS (Advocates for Truth in Our Schools) library room meeting so we are meeting at an alternate location. Please RSVP for this alternate location. We are considering additional steps to ensure information for parents is not suppressed.
Please reply to this email atos21.maine@gmail.com
As you may or may not know, the Kennebunk Free Library approved the ATOS (Advocates for Truth in Our Schools) library room rental request for Tuesday, Mar. 12th for a presentation about the Transgender Policies and Procedures at RSU 21.
After ATOS had printed and distributed flyers and notified the newspapers about the event, the library changed its mind (after consulting with at least one RSU 21 school board member).
From – ATOS (Advocates for Truth in Our Schools)
Below are the issues:
Kennebunk Free Library
- The Library is not following its own policies, nor American Library Association policies. Nothing in the flyer presented ATOS as an official RSU 21 event.
- The Library demanded that ATOS remove the word “learn” from the flyer and that it not be “promoted as informational or educational.”
- The Library’s Meeting Room Use Policy Statement of Purpose includes:
- “for meetings that are educational, intellectual, cultural, charitable, civic, or recreational in nature” and “Permission to use a meeting room does not constitute or imply Library endorsement of the aims, policies, or activities of any individual, group, or organization or any views expressed in the meeting.”
- Additionally, the Use Policy includes, 2. Equitable Access Regardless of Beliefs or Affiliations – “This policy was prepared with the intent to adhere to the American Library Association’s Bill of Rights regarding the use of meeting rooms. In allocating the use of a Library’s meeting room, the Library shall not discriminate on the basis of the political or religious beliefs of applicants, or on any other constitutionally or statutorily prohibited basis.”
- The Library previously rented room space in 2023 for the three-session “redefining gender” workshop which was marketed as educating the public about a particular view of a similar subject matter.
- The library states its “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice Statement” as follows:
“Kennebunk Free Library is committed to fostering, cultivating, and preserving a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We encourage our community to embrace and share their life experiences, inventiveness, innovation self-expression, and unique capabilities so that we may all better understand and learn from each other. We also embrace our community’s differences in age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, socio-economic status, veteran status and other characteristics that make our community unique. “(November 2022).
RSU 21
School Board influence. The library appears to have coordinated its denial of room space with RSU 21, which expressed official disapproval of the ATOS event as an “attempt to discredit the importance of respecting and supporting the rights of transgender and gender expansive student in our district.”
Contrary to the school board complaint, ATOS deeply cares for all children (including those who identify as “transgender” or who do not identify with their natal sex). ATOS is concerned with efforts to encourage children in false identities that too often have resulted in mutilating surgeries.