A crowd of concerned parents and citizens in Front Royal, Virginia , gathered to make their voices heard to the Warren County Board of Supervisors last week. The subject that took center stage at the meeting , and continues to drive local news , is the books that Samuels Public Library keeps on its shelves.

Speakers from the group CleanUpSamuels and its supporters arrived to protest sexually explicit books being made available to children at the taxpayer-funded library. The group has identified dozens of materials that graphically depict a variety of sexual acts, including rape and child molestation.

For this, leftist speakers at the meeting called them “extremists,” accused them of “bigotry” and “hate,” and repeatedly compared them to Nazi book burners for their concerns. While opponents had no defense for the undeniably explicit nature of the material that residents read aloud at the meeting, they emphasized that many of the books contain LGBT topics and invoked the First Amendment.

Since a parent may still keep their child away from any book, they argued, parents in the overwhelmingly conservative county should just accept that an institution they fund shelves material that threatens their children’s innocence.

CleanUpSamuels member Thomas Hinnant told the Washington Examiner this argument isn’t good enough.

“Our argument is simple,” Hinnant explained. “We want a place that is family-friendly, that follows the community consensus, where our values are upheld, not a place where parents … have to hawkishly watch their children when they’re in a child’s section of a library to make sure that they don’t pull something that’s more graphic than the latest issue of Hustler.”

The board will hold a budget approval vote on Tuesday that will determine the future of the library. CleanUpSamuels demands that the county either cut funding for the library or pressure library director Michelle Ross to remove the controversial items.

Ross, like other library staff across the country, has cited the recommendations of the left-wing American Library Association when siding against concerned parents. She even admitted that one of the books in question “might not be suitable for every person in the publisher’s recommended age group” but still refused to remove it.

The push against “woke” and sexual content has drawn the attention of powerful conservative interests, including multiple political candidates who showed up to last week’s meeting in support. This enthusiasm is part of a larger grassroots movement that will lead to a “changing of the guard” in Warren County, Hinnant told the Washington Examiner, which will hopefully strip power from “bureaucrats” who “run wild with our tax dollars” in pursuit of a leftist social agenda.

Hinnant emphasized he would happily support increased funding for the library once it better serves taxpayers.

CleanUpSamuels, he said, is just one step toward “revitalization” for the county. “This is a community centered on family values,” Hinnant said.

Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.