Dupage Policy Journal

A former candidate for the Helen Plum Library Board of Trustees questioned the board about the placement of a book featuring a group of Catholic nun-mocking transvestites in the library’s children’s section.

“No one’s questioning free speech or banning books,” said O’Connell in public comments at the board’s June 20, 2023 meeting. “It’s actually illegal to ban books. But the issue is why are you guys putting this in the kid’s section?” 

“Why are you promoting it?” O’Connell said. “We’re not asking that you take it out of the library. You put it in the kids’ section on the forefront, right in their faces. You enter the library and the kids section, right in their faces.”

Pages 10-11 of "This Day in June", featuring "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" | Creativebookreviews.wordpress.com

O’Connell specifically asked the board about the placement of a book called “This Day in June.”

On pages ten and 11, the book features a phot of the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” which is a group of transvestites who masquerade as Catholic nuns and mock Catholic rites and ceremonies.

O’Connell showed the board a video of the transvestites in what he said was “a sexual performance by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, dancing, on the crucified Lord Jesus Christ.”

The group of transvestites made national headlines recently with the Los Angeles Dodgers honored the group in a ceremony on June 16.

Golden State Today reported, “The Dodgers announced Monday they will host the so-called "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence," who "have agreed to receive the gratitude" of the team organization during its home game versus the San Francisco Giants on June 16.” 

In her book profiling the transvestite group, titled "Queer Nuns", author Melissa Wilcox described its members as "a congregation blessed by a dildo dipped in poppers," or drugs that produce chemical vapors inhaled by homosexuals for their "mind-altering effects" and that "cause a euphoria that can reduce inhibitions, increase sexual drive, and intensify the sensations of orgasm," according to the National Institutes of Health.

Wilcox also described "yogurt-filled chalices offered at a funeral to represent the intake of semen" and a “Condom Savior Mass” where "participants vow to use protection."

O’Connell, who ran unsuccessfully for the library board in the 2023 election, is a 35 year-old facilities manager with a background in poetry and creative writing. In April 2023, he raised questions about the “sexual display” in the library’s kid’s section.

DuPage Policy Journal reported that O’Connell said the library, “promoted a kids display that featured depictions of naked adults and children and explanations of physical, romantic love.” 

"And they ignored hundreds of parents who petitioned the library to take down the sexual display that their kids could not avoid since it was at the entry to the children’s section of the library,” he said. 

Founded in 1927, the Helen M. Plum Memorial Library is a public library in Lombard, Ill. It’s current location at 411 S Main St. cost is 50,000 square feet and cost Lombard taxpayers $27.7 million, or about $1,393 per Lombard household. That building was constructed after the Lombard Park District had offered the Plum board land to build a new library for free. The library board instead held a referendum, which passed, and the board instead spent $2.295 million to purchase and build on land of a shuttered supermarket.