This blog post serves two purposes. The first is to give an update and my rendition of events over the last week regarding the LGBTQ+ library movie night. It is not my M.O. (Method of Operation) to attend events in protest. This was my first. It was not easy. The second purpose of this blog post is to encourage people to get off the sidelines.
So late last week I had shared an email exchange with City folk over the movie night. I also shared the results of an open records request. The result showed the involvement of a Whitewater High School teacher, portions of UW-W (the portions one would expect), the city administration and library, and outside identity action group(s) out of Madison and New York.
The head librarian, Stacey Lunsford sent out an email shortly after my open records request was filed (February 17th), advising people to call her with questions (yes, she even underlined it in her email). After that, the emails dissipated.
I complain about city events quite a bit on my silly little blog here, to the point that I feel like a curmudgeon. I get huge support behind the scenes, but going after city dysfunction over the last three years (and there is no shortage of city dysfunction) requires some emotional and spiritual energy in the tank.
Friday morning I had a couple good friends take me aside and tell me I am going after this stuff in a non-Biblical way.
I also decided that I had gotten so deep into this identity battle that I may as well give my passionate plea for identity in Jesus Christ. I promise you that I believe it with all my heart and soul and mind. Link Here.
There is a state law for which I inquired with the city.
WI Statues 944.25 Sending obscene or sexually explicit electronic messages.
(b) “Obscene material; has the meaning given in s. 944.21 (2) (c).
944.21 Obscene material or performance.
(c) “Obscene material; means a writing, picture, film, or other recording that:
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find appeals to the prurient
Interest if taken as a whole;
2. Under contemporary community standards, describes or shows sexual conduct in a patently offensive
way; and
3. Lacks serious literary, artistic, political, educational or scientific value, if taken as a whole.
As of Monday morning, I had not received any response from the city regarding this statute. (As a point of information, I am yet to receive a formal response from the city regarding this statute). So I sent an email:
John,
With regard to the child film night at the library tomorrow night:
WI Statues 944.25 Sending obscene or sexually explicit electronic messages.
(b) “Obscene material; has the meaning given in s. 944.21 (2) (c).
944.21 Obscene material or performance.
(c) “Obscene material; means a writing, picture, film, or other recording that:
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find appeals to the prurient
Interest if taken as a whole;
2. Under contemporary community standards, describes or shows sexual conduct in a patently offensive
way; and
3. Lacks serious literary, artistic, political, educational or scientific value, if taken as a whole.
-How the event planners / event or movie violates this law? Because this movie is obscene material
for minors. Under contemporary standards is offensive. Lacks serious literary, artistic, political,
educational or scientific value,I can tell you that, based on my feedback that the vast majority of the community is very much against this.
How do you account for the fact that the average person in Whitewater would find the child film night patently offensive? One cannot make a credible case that an average person in the community finds this acceptable. Please share with me (consider this an open records request) data that shows the average person in Whitewater finds this activity acceptable.
Best case scenario you don’t know.
Consider this an order to cease and desist, for your own sake.
Should be a fun week.
—
Michael Smith
Full disclosure here so there is no room for interpretation. The response from City Manager John Weidl is below:
Mike,
I’m going to send a copy of this the City Council, so they know exactly what I’m saying to you.
While I appreciate your concerns regarding the LGBTQ+ movie night taking place at the library, both the library director and I have heard you, and the library is going forward with their programming. That’s it. The decision has been made and it’s unequivocal.
l am losing patience with the way you are bullying the library director through email and online and the way you have worked behind the scenes to try and gather people to show up and intimidate teenagers at the library in advance of this event. I’ve seen the evidence demonstrating that you’re hoping to gather people up to an hour in advance of the event to take up all the seating. Please don’t write me back in an email that that didn’t happen because I’ll have the Police Chief put the screenshot in an email and send it to me.
I would suggest that you think long and hard about the actions you take over the next several days. I highly doubt anyone in the community is in the mood right now for anyone who’s going to try and intimidate teenagers at the library.
Additionally, your actions mentioned above have directly contributed to the City needing to call in additional police officers and pay overtime, due to the safety concerns we now have stemming directly from your actions online. Which is what we’re going to do. We’re now going to have a police presence to protect the teenagers at the library from the adults who can’t seem to behave properly. Because as I previously stated, the library is not canceling the event.
I’d like you to reread those last two sentences again because they’re extremely important and those thoughts are what I’m going to focus on when I eventually talk to the press and public.
I’d suggest you take your own advice and cease and desist from pursuing this matter any further. As I’ve clearly stated, the programming is happening.
I look forward to being at the event tomorrow and I plan on sitting right next to you if you show up. I’ll be the City Manager with the LBGTQ support pin on. We can continue this conversation in person.
Have a great week, Mike. It’s always a pleasure to be the recipient of your musings.
Best, – JSW
John S. Weidl
City Manager, City of Whitewater
And there is more:
Mike,
I’m also pursuing my options related to the line in your email below about ceasing and desisting, “for my sake.” I’ll be following up with the police.
I’m concerned that you are threatening harm to my person, which is a class b misdemeanor.
Best, – JSW
As another point of information, the police never followed up with me regarding Jon’s “concern”. I have to imagine that telling someone you are going to sit next to them with the LGBTQ+ pin and continue a conversation removes any merit in telling that same person that you are concerned over “threatening harm”.
Speaking of the pin… didn’t Kramer do the pin best?
To go back to John’s first reply…. Man, that’s a lot of gaslighting. Accusing me of intimidating teenagers. I cannot help but notice that Weidl took matters as far as he could, based on the restraints given him with the law and his authority. In fact, based on his baseless accusation, he took them further than he should have.
Fact is … a local group of Christians committed to coming and praying over the kids. We will get to that later….
So by Tuesday night I was on the fence as to whether I was going to actually go to the library.
But again, I am blessed to have people around me that provide such positive impact. 430pm on Tuesday night, Chuck Mills provided me with the proper motivation.
“You raised this stink over this… you probably need to go.” He said.
Then I called another friend and he was there, waving the flag in front of the library.
So an amazing peace came over me (after praying about it a bit) and I headed to the library.
So my observations over the actual event:
- There was 6-8 uniformed police officers in the library. I made it a point to shake each of their hands.
- I walked in and said hi to Mr. Weidl. I gave him every opportunity to come sit by me and discuss the event as he proposed. Never happened.
- I met the dozen or so Christian prayer warriors. They are amazing people. In fact, if you read this and you were a prayer warrior, please make contact with me.
- I counted about twenty kids max at the event. At one point, I even made the comment to Police Chief Meyer “All this for about ten kids…”
- Over half the twenty kids present were dragged by their progressive parents. No Christian or conservative kids (with their parents) were present. If I am wrong here, please ping me and I will correct.
- About a third of the kids dragged by their parents appeared to be well under the mandatory age of 13.
- Was clear that there was high risk that the kiddos without parents did not have consent from cette parents.
- There was about thirty UWW kids at each library entrance protesting in favor of the event. That is quite a network they must have. They owe me a thank you for giving them something to do.
- There was easily another hundred adults in the event in favor of the event, including parents and local interested parties.
- So that makes it very near to 10 to 1 adults to children at the event.
- Chuck Mills showed up to check out the event. I give him TONS of credit for being the only school board candidate to attend. Chuck sat right up front with the kids. One of the librarians told him to move to the back, and Chuck took her into the hallway and chewed her out in front of the cops. He then went back into the event and sat in front with the kids.
Huge kudos to the prayer warriors. Huge! I actually left the event to go to the city council meeting twenty minutes into the movie. Based on the reports I received, the prayer warriors sat back, prayed, talked to the UWW kids, handed out scripture and Christian lyrics. They planted seeds. Amazing.
It sounds a lot like the backlash to the event has just begun. The progressives in town really seemed to try to keep the event under wraps. The progressive Whitewater Banner didn’t even post the event until the day of, when the gig was up. There were no signs around town and a couple people pointed out to me there were no signs in the library for the event. Lots of questions.
I also asked Walworth County DA Zeke Weidenfeld about the state statute and his response is below:
The term “average person” as used in this statute, applies to the average person in the State of Wisconsin and would not be determined by polling data, but rather 12 jurors at a jury trial after someone was charged with a crime. The data you are requesting does not exist.
I am a advocate for our DA. I think he is a good dude. With that said 🙂 I feel like that is pretty weak sauce. A jury of twelve (that must all come to agreement) does not equal “average”. Leave it to the lawyers.
The other comment from Zeke:
The question about whether a movie is “acceptable” for a teenager to view is best left to that teenager’s parents. Parents can certainly prohibit their children from attending this movie.
And we have officially come full circle. By that, I remind that my original beef with the event was that parental consent was not required.
I currently have an open records request out for the coloring books at the event. I was pinged by a couple people regarding these.
And HUGE HUGE HUGE thanks to the police… professional and awesome as always.
So subscribe here:
Peace OUT,
-mike
Discerning Whitewater 