The president of Northern Indiana Atheists raised money to build several Little Free Libraries in 2024 specifically to “share banned and challenged diverse books,” including those with LGBT messaging and pornographic material.
Troy Moss fundraised for the project over his Facebook page in November, surpassing his goal of $800. According to Moss, he gathered almost $1,000 for the project, which will begin in 2024. Little Free Libraries are small wooden boxes planted in neighborhoods that serve as book exchanges. Moss’s libraries will be built in the South Bend and Mishawaka, Indiana areas.
“We have installation locations ready to go,” Moss said in a recent update. “We will spend the winter months building and collecting books and we will install them in the spring of 2024 when the ground thaws.”
Moss wrote the project was motivated by recent efforts from “local religious extremists” to put books for children that show and describe queer sex acts on request-only shelves in the local government-run library.
“We want the bottom shelf to be accessible by littles,” Moss said, displaying his Little Free Library design. Neither Moss nor the Northern Indiana Atheists responded to requests for comment.
The Little Free Library national organization “does not police what stewards put in their Little Free Libraries,” spokeswoman Margret Aldrich said in an interview. The Little Free Library organization states on its website that “everyone who uses the library has the right of helping make sure the types of books in it are appropriate
