A Tennessee library director lost his job over online accusation made by conservative celebrities.
Actor and author Kirk Cameron, former swimmer Riley Gaines and "Duck Dynasty" star Missy Robertson complained the staff at Hendersonville Public Library were less than hospitable while they were recording promotional videos for the Christian-themed children's book, "As You Grow," and even tried to cancel their scheduled family event, reported Fox News.
"Not only were they rude to us," Robertson said. "They were super rude to their entire community that lived there in Hendersonville, Tennessee, because that is a public library and they could have invited all those people who were standing in the rain to come and form lines inside the library, down the aisles, sit on the ground. We weren't even reading in the library part, we were down the hall in a conference room. They wouldn't let them in. They made them stand outside in the freezing cold with their children in the rain. Total rudeness to me."
Cameron's book tour is intended as a direct response to "drag queen story hour" events some libraries host, and which have become a culture war issue for conservatives, and his complaints about Hendersonville Public Library were extensively covered by Fox News.
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"This is not in California or New York City, this is in Nashville," Robertson said. "People are moving to Nashville and the surrounding areas to get away from this stuff. It's not just happening in, quote, 'liberal' areas. They're coming for your kids."
The public accusations prompted a bomb threat emailed to the library Tuesday, and the following day the Sumner County Library board voted 4-3 the following day to terminate library director Allan Morales, although a county commissioner pointed out that he was not among the employees accused of making noise while the conservative trio recorded their video, reported WTVF-TV.
"To terminate him so publicly, that was not right," said Morales' sister Marilyn Kleist, who attended the board meeting to support him. "That's not right, that I know for sure. That is shocking, and it's sad and it has literally divided a community. It has, you know, branded the library team in ways that only told one side of the story."
Kleist had hoped Gaines, who lives in Hendersonville, or the two TV personalities would attend the meeting but they did not.
"I was hoping that they would also be held accountable, and that would be brought to light but, it wasn't, and today Allan did not get an opportunity to speak," she said. "He was asked to show up at the hearing and was pretty much invisible."
