The children's room was packed. People stood outside the doorway because there wasn't enough space inside. On the sidewalk, supporters drew hearts, peace signs, and messages in chalk.
There were also three protesters.
This was the scene at Columbia Public Library in Missouri on July 25, where roughly 150 people showed up for "Rainbow Story Time," a free event for toddlers, preschoolers, and their families. Two picture books were read. Children sang "Old MacDonald," played with bubbles, and left carrying rainbow scarves.
What might otherwise have been a typical Saturday morning had become a statewide political fight. Missouri's attorney general warned the library about the state's pornography laws. The secretary of state threatened its funding. And state officials soon began talking about investigating the library and changing Missouri law so similar events couldn't happen again.
What Happened at Rainbow Story Time?
The event was advertised as "queer-led story time with an LGBTQ+ theme. We'll share stories, sing songs and do an activity with time to meet new friends at the end."
Steve Antony's Rainbowsaurus follows two dads and their three children as they search for a colorful dinosaur. Jonathan Hillman's Big Wig tells the story of a child who puts on a wig, becomes a drag persona named B.B. Bedazzle, and enters a neighborhood costume contest.
The books are written for children ages 3-5 and 4-8, respectively. Neither depicts sexual activity.
On July 23, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway sent a letter to the Daniel Boone Regional Library, which operates the Columbia branch, saying local residents had complained about the event. The letter reminded the library that providing pornographic material to minors is illegal under Missouri law.
The following day, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins went further. He called the event an attempt to expose young children to "adult material" and described it as "sexual grooming." If the library went ahead, Hoskins warned, he would do everything within his power to block state and federal funding for future events.
The library didn't cancel.
"We never wavered from holding Rainbow Story Time as planned," library spokeswoman Mitzi St. John later said. "We weren't doing anything illegal."
Records later obtained by KOMU 8 through Missouri's Sunshine Law cast doubt on just how local the initial outcry really was. The material that appears to have first caught state officials' attention included a Facebook post from a person listed as living roughly two hours from Columbia and an anonymous post on X.
KOMU also found that most complaints sent separately to Hoskins arrived after he posted publicly about the story time, suggesting much of the backlash followed the state's intervention rather than prompting it.
That is a different picture from Columbia parents flooding state offices with complaints about their neighborhood library.
What Did Families Actually Find?
For all the brouhaha surrounding the event, the scene inside seems to have been pretty uneventful.
Brandon Steele had never attended one of the library's story times. After seeing the controversy online, he went expecting trouble. Instead, he found a packed library and only a handful of protesters.
"I came here expecting there to be like a big crowd of people maybe causing problems," Steele told ABC 17. "And it was completely unnecessary. There was like one guy."
Mary Lamberton, a retired public school secretary and grandmother, came for a more personal reason. Her niece is transgender, and she wanted families attending to know they had support in the community. She recalled a positive atmosphere and an overflow crowd spilling beyond the children's room.
Library Executive Director Robin Westphal said this was the library's first story time specifically geared toward families with LGBTQ+ parents.
"These families have a legal right to exist in Missouri and in every other state," Westphal said. "Don't these families deserve to see their family represented in programming?"
For some parents, the answer will be an emphatic yes. For others, the books themselves cross a moral line.
When Does a Children's Book Become "Pornography"?
Hoskins's use of "sexual grooming" has a history. In 1977, born-again Christian singer Anita Bryant launched her "Save Our Children" campaign against a Miami-Dade gay-rights ordinance, warning that gay people were trying to "recruit" children. Jerry Falwell supported Bryant before founding the Moral Majority two years later, helping make opposition to homosexuality and pornography part of the emerging Religious Right's "pro-family" politics. The word "groomer" is newer, but the underlying accusation is not.
That history helps explain the baggage carried by the term. But not every parent who objects to LGBTQ+ themes in children's programming sees the issue that way.
Some religious parents sincerely believe young children should not be introduced to same-sex marriage, drag, or unconventional gender expression. Southern Baptist teaching, for example, defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and assigns parents responsibility for teaching children biblical morality. A Baptist family might therefore see both books as carrying messages they do not want presented approvingly to their child.
Other Christians reach different conclusions. The United Methodist Church now recognizes Christian marriage between either a man and woman or "two adult persons," and in 2024 removed churchwide prohibitions on gay clergy and penalties for clergy who perform same-sex weddings.
But moral disapproval and pornography are not legally interchangeable.
Missouri's definition of material that is "pornographic for minors" requires more than something a parent considers inappropriate. Among other requirements, the material must depict or describe nudity or sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
ABC 17 reporters reviewed both books before the event. Attorney Charles Hatfield, a former chief of staff in the Missouri attorney general's office, told the station the state's pornography laws are deliberately narrow.
"You can ban pornography, but it has to really be pornography," he said. "You can't just ban books or materials that you don't like."
At a July 28 press conference, Hoskins acknowledged that he had looked up the books but had not read them. State Sen. Rick Brattin, who joined him, repeatedly accused the library of sexualizing and grooming children. Neither official identified content in either book that met Missouri's legal definition of pornography.
"If it's not illegal, then we're going to be working with the legislature," Hoskins said, adding that other lawmakers had contacted him about filing legislation to prevent similar events.
Missouri Has Been Here Before
This isn't Missouri's first fight over what children can encounter in libraries. In 2022, the state enacted a law threatening school employees with criminal penalties for providing certain "sexually explicit" materials to students. A judge struck it down in November 2025 as unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.
Hoskins has also used library funding as leverage before. In March 2025, his office suspended a payment to OverDrive, which operates the Sora school reading app, after complaints about inappropriate books. After reviewing Sora's parental controls and safeguards, his office released the money the following month.
That April 18 announcement stressed that Missouri libraries and school districts operate under local control and encouraged concerned parents to work with local governing boards.
The Columbia controversy now puts that principle to another test.
Parents' Rights, But Which Parents?
Nobody was required to attend Rainbow Story Time. A Christian family that believes Big Wig contradicts its faith could choose another program or different books. An LGBTQ+ family could make the opposite choice.
That distinction echoes another recent fight over children's books. In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that religious parents could opt their children out of public school lessons involving LGBTQ+-inclusive storybooks. As we covered at the time, those parents sought permission for their own children not to participate. In Columbia, the disputed program was voluntary.
For Universal Life Church ministers, who encounter families with very different convictions about marriage, sexuality, gender, and Scripture, that's a familiar feature of religious pluralism. People in the same community can hold deeply incompatible beliefs and still share public institutions.
The difficult part is deciding what role, if any, government should play in policing the beliefs permitted within those institutions.
The Fight Isn't Over
Rainbow Story Time is over, but the state's scrutiny of the library is not.
Brattin has requested records concerning Rainbow Story Time and other LGBTQ+ programming dating back to January 1, 2025. The library expects to complete the request by September 21, a timetable Brattin has criticized as too slow.
On August 6, the National Coalition Against Censorship condemned the investigation and funding threats, arguing that state officials were pressuring librarians to censor themselves.
As of August 17, no criminal charges against the library have been announced, nor has Daniel Boone Regional Library publicly lost funding over the event.
When families in the same community hold sharply different religious and moral beliefs about sexuality, gender, and what children should be exposed to, how should a public library decide which programs to offer?
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