With Rural Libraries Under Attack, a Washington Town Rallies to Defend Its Own

Rural libraries are “hubs of community services that go well beyond what people understand a normal library to be,” says Emily Burt, Friends of the Republic Library (FORL) board member and co-chair of the building committee. In 2021, FORL began efforts to transform the one-room Republic Library into a more modern facility that would provide an even greater array of services to the community.

The library expansion project proposes to build a new library with amenities like private meeting rooms, a maker space and an attached community center with a child care center. The child care center is of particular significance as there are currently no state licensed child care facilities anywhere in the county.

Although the ambitious project comes with an estimated price tag upwards of $18 million, FORL does not propose any tax increases for the project. Instead, they will rely primarily on a combination of state and federal grants.

As of January 2025, the project had raised over $1 million, with support from state Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber (R), a Republic resident. When Maycumber left the Washington State House earlier this year, organizers were optimistic about obtaining another $772,500 from a capital budget request from Washington State Senator Shelly Short (R), who had pledged her support. But in February, Short abruptly reversed course, announcing that she would not recommend funding for the new library.

To understand this turn of events, it is important to know one other detail about the Republic Library. Facing the street, opposite the main entrance and community gathering area, there is a bright rainbow flag hanging inside a corner door window next to the young adult section: the pride progress flag.

Jas Templet, the Republic librarian, put the flag up in 2024 as part of the library’s annual June pride celebration. When the month ended, they decided to leave it up. They say that after the flag went up, they saw a significant increase in LGBTQ+ patrons and heard from community members that the flag made them feel safe and welcomed. But in August, a group calling themselves The Republic Library Changemakers began to lobby the board of North Central Washington Libraries, which manages the Republic library and other libraries in Ferry County and four mostly rural surrounding counties, to remove the flag. They also petitioned the board to change library district policy to allow only American and Washington State flags.

Several Changemakers members took their concerns to the board meetings for the library district, where they made it clear that their problem is not only with the pride flag itself, but also the LGBTQ+ books highlighted at the library.

As Carolann Gutierrez told the board in public comments, “The Republic Library Changemakers were created in response to the direction our library is being driven by the branch librarian.” Republic, she says, is a “small and largely conservative community. While we are respectful and tolerant of the LGBTQ celebration of Pride Month, the ongoing prioritization and elevation of LGBTQ materials continues to this day and appears to be the permanent focus of our local library.”

She further claimed that the flag was part of an attempt to sexually groom children and described LGBTQ+ culture as “permeated” by “Godlessness, baby genocide … drug addiction, [and] obesity,” among other things. Other speakers from the group compared the pride flag to a Nazi flag and called it a “Marxist symbol,” likening the placement of the flag in the library to the symbolic planting of the victor’s flag in conquered territory.

Challenges to LGBTQ+ books and events have become commonplace across the country as anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment continues to rise.

In 2023, a rural library in Washington’s Columbia County was on the cusp of becoming the first in the nation to close over a book banning controversy. A lawsuit ultimately kept the library from closing that year.

In neighboring Idaho, a 2024 survey of the state’s librarians found that 60% of respondents were considering leaving the profession in the wake of a rash of bills aimed at censoring library materials. In Yancey County, North Carolina, a strikingly similar library pride flag debate ended in the county pulling out of their regional library system. The Fairhope, Alabama public library was just defunded over a selection of books in their teen section.

With Donald Trump in power, many such actions appear to be a prelude of what is to come. On March 14, Trump signed an executive order gutting The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a move which will disproportionately affect small and rural libraries that often rely on those funds for staffing support. This year, both the Utah and Idaho state legislatures passed a law banning the display of nonofficial flags at schools and government buildings.

Kate Laughlin, executive director of The Association for Rural & Small Libraries, fears that funding cuts and a national climate of censorship will leave more rural communities like Republic without libraries. “The highest office in the land is held by somebody who supports many of these views and is bringing it into policy.”

The Republic Library Changemakers appear eager to use the current political dynamic to their advantage. “There is a new leader in our country, and the harming of children will no longer be tolerated,” Guttierrez said at the library board meeting.

But despite the Changemakers’ insistence about the “largely conservative” nature of Republic, the library board in fact received more comments in support of the pride display than against it.

One of the people who voiced support for the flag is Heather Brice, who has lived in Ferry County since 2021. For her, seeing the pride flag hanging in the library helped put her at ease about moving to a rural town as a queer woman.

Brice is part of the recently formed PRIDE of Ferry County, which originally began as Facebook group but now has become an organization for queer community members and allies who are fighting back against what they see as an attack by a small but vocal group of citizens who do not represent the community as a whole.

Although Ferry County is largely conservative (65% voted for Trump in 2024), Republic has been a mostly tolerant place to live as an openly gay woman, says community member Crystal Strong, who co-founded the PRIDE Facebook group and now serves as the organization’s vice president.

Strong, a real estate broker in Ferry and Okanogan counties, has lived in Republic for the past 20 years and ran a restaurant in town with her wife for much of that time. She says things started to feel different over the last few years as increasing hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community grew nationally, stoked by Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s anti-trans rhetoric. Strong says that she co-founded PRIDE of Ferry County after hearing the Changemakers’ hateful comments at the library board meeting. “We realized there was a need for community in our area and work to be done.” The invite-only group grew to over 130 people in just a few months.

They quickly mobilized to write letters of support for the library to local representatives, publish comments in the local paper and attend library board meetings to voice their support for the flag display. For many, the issue is about more than a flag. “It would be the books next,” says Brice. “The moment you relent, you’ve lost that ground permanently.”

In fact, Templet says, during last year’s pride month the library was asked by community members to remove its LGBTQ+ related books. Although focus has since shifted to the flag, Templet notes that the Republic Changemakers “have publicly stated that they want to decide what is appropriate for everyone in Republic … This is censorship and would violate the Republic community’s freedom to read and access information.”

After months of hearing arguments over the pride flag, the library’s flag policy came to a vote in the North Central Washington Libraries February board meeting. Several PRIDE of Ferry County members spoke at the meeting before the vote, including Marcella Lewis, whose son has battled cancer since the age of 10. “His dream is to one day get married, adopt children with his future husband, and raise a family. When so many of his dreams have been taken by cancer, I desperately want him to realize his visions without living in fear of oppression,” she said.

The board voted 6-1 not to implement a flag banning policy, as the Changemakers demanded, but instead empowered their librarians with full curatorial authority over library displays and materials.

The lone dissenting voice came from Nancy Churchill, Ferry County’s representative on the library board. Churchill is a longtime conservative activist who teaches an online course called “Influencing Olympia Effectively” and has been a strong advocate for the Changemakers’ demands from the beginning of the controversy. After the vote, Churchill lodged a formal complaint against North Central Washington Libraries executive director Barbara Walters and proposed that she be subject to performance reviews and an investigation. The complaint was dismissed by another 6-1 vote.

PRIDE members were elated when they heard the board’s decision. However, their celebration was short-lived. Days later, Republican state Sen. Shelly Short announced that she would not recommend funding for the Republic Library expansion project due to the pride flag controversy, delivering a serious blow to the library’s future.

Short explained her decision in a statement, saying:

[T]he year-round display of a “Gay Pride” flag has proven extremely divisive, and until this is resolved, action on our part in Olympia to expand this facility would only deepen local frustration with library management. […] I think I speak for many in the community in wondering why a local-government institution needs to be making a political statement in the first place.

The library project is further threatened by the Trump administration’s elimination of several federal funding programs that Friends of the Republic Library had applied for.

Emily Burt, a native of Republic who co-owns Republic Brewing Company, notes that as an ultra-rural community in the poorest county in the state, Republic depends on the library for many essential services that wealthier communities take for granted, like reliable Wi-Fi, warming centers for unhoused folks and safe after-school spaces—services that the new library would add to and expand. Without these services, she says, “the community begins to wither.”

Between federal funding cuts and Sen. Short’s decision, the project will likely be delayed by at least a year. “I don’t want to believe that it is the first sign that funding is just not going to be available for rural communities, but it feels a little like that,” says Burt.

The threat to funding has also exacerbated the sense of division within the community. Crystal Strong says she has felt pressure—even from members of the community who are otherwise supportive of PRIDE of Ferry County—to drop the pride flag fight out of fear that further controversy will jeopardize the future of the library.

Strong, however, has no plans to back down any time soon. She hopes that her fellow community members will stand with the Republic LGBTQ+ community even when it is risky to do so. “Being an ally means standing close enough to be hit by the rock when they are thrown,” she says. “You can’t do it alone. And we shouldn’t have to.”

For members of PRIDE of Ferry County, one silver lining has been the community they’ve been able to build together in a challenging political moment. Moving forward, the group plans to continue raising awareness. They are now writing a weekly column in the local paper and hope to get more diverse voices elected in the county.  

The Friends of the Republic Library, meanwhile, are downsizing their plans in order to make the project feasible within the new funding climate. This will likely mean a smaller footprint and shorter list of services. “Rural communities are going to have to fight harder to meet the basic needs of their communities,” Burt says. She hopes that the community will be able to find a way to work together toward a common cause.

Jas Templet says that they and the library staff have been harassed and faced public disparagement over the flag. In May, Templet left the Republic Library to move to California. In the face of increasing threats to libraries nationwide, Barbara Walters says that North Central Washington Libraries plans to update their collections and privacy policies over the coming months to affirm their commitment to intellectual freedom and access to information.

With pride month approaching, PRIDE of Ferry County is working on fundraising efforts. “How fun would it be to give the library a big fat rainbow gay check?” says Strong.

Since the board’s vote, members of the Changemakers have continued voicing their discontent regarding the pride flag. It’s unclear whether they plan to target further library funding opportunities if the flag remains up.

Multiple Changemaker members contacted by Barn Raiser for this article either declined to comment or did not respond.

Despite the setbacks, Emily Burt is trying to remain optimistic. “We’re a pretty determined team,” she says. “None of us is going anywhere.”

As a homeschooled kid growing up in Ferry County without a lot of money, Burt remembers her trips to the library fondly. “That was the place where I was allowed to go, and my world could get bigger.”

To her, libraries are one of the few places that still represent core American values of equal education and free speech. “They’re like this little microcosm of what I want our society to be,” she says. “So I will keep fighting for that.”

Misha ScottMore by this author →

Misha Scott is a writer and filmmaker from rural Eastern Washington and currently based in Seattle. Her writing has appeared in Bat City Review, Hobart, Gold Flake Paint and The Smart Set, among others.