A children’s story hour at Springfield-Greene County Library devolved into a bizarre political rally last Friday, and days later spiraled even further into a book-burning by a Republican candidate for Missouri’s secretary of state.
In a post to X (formerly Twitter), that has since been censored, an unhinged video shot outside of the library shows Valentina Gomez setting two queer books aflame and vowing to burn more should she succeed in securing public office.
Gomez, 24, visited the library on Friday, and by Tuesday posted a video of the book-burning to X. In the video, she appears to use a homemade flamethrower decorated to resemble the shark-toothed aircraft popularized by the Flying Tigers in World War II to incinerate two library books on a stool.
One of the books that was burned was Queer: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens by authors Kathy Belge and Mark Bieschke. The other was Naked: Not Your Average Sex Encyclopedia by Myriam Daguzan Bernier, a guide for teens about health.