An openly gay pastor lost his library job amid a storm of social media conspiracy and homophobia. St. Joseph now faces a massive lawsuit

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One buzz came in. Then another. Soon, on (what was supposed to be) an average day in mid-June of 2023, notifications began piling into First Christian Church Pastor Brian Kirk’s inbox. What he found looking into the glowing rectangle was utterly disturbing and life-altering.

A social media post—created by Grace Calvary Chapel Pastor Josh Blevins—had been calling for his congregation to voice their opposition against St. Joseph Mayor John Josendale’s decision to reappoint Kirk to a financial position on their city’s public library board.

The post reads, “Brian is outspoken as an open and affirming pastor who celebrates the LGBTQ movement and lifestyle. His appointment to a post that directly impacts our youngest and most vulnerable minds should be a deep concern for any resident who wants to keep our libraries as centers for unbiased learning. We don’t want our public libraries to become indoctrination centers for the LGBTQ movement.”

The post also included different screenshots of Kirk and his Church’s social media accounts, followed by over a hundred comments of those in support of either Blevins or Kirk—producing another one of the many keyboard wars that take place across modern society.

“Anybody that wakes up one morning and finds out you’re suddenly a target on social media and there’s nothing you can do to control it—it took an emotional toll, it definitely took a physical toll on our family,” Kirk says.

“Brian had to wake up one day and go viral with visceral hate over something that he can’t change,” says Sarah Duggan, one of Kirk’s attorney. “So, you wake up one day, you do absolutely nothing, and you’re inundated with hate, and that is just fundamentally wrong.”

After serving on the board for about three years, Kirk did not see why Mayor Josendale would not reappoint him to the position, considering he has not committed any sort of violations that would give the council reason to bar him from the board. On top of this, Mayor Josendale told Kirk that he would reappoint him, prior to any social media postings in opposition.

The following day, Kirk met with the St. Joseph Library board director to discuss how to go about the situation, only to find out that Mayor Josendale had given her notice to rescind his opportunity for the financial board position. Sitting down for about a 15-minute conversation with Josendale that same day, Kirk was told that he had received around 20 phone calls, calling for Kirk to be removed from the library board, simply due to his sexual orientation and commitment to LGBGTQ+ advocacy.

“Then he said, ‘Well you know, it’s all related to people are unhappy with the pride flags that are all over town, people are not happy that somebody’s trying to paint a pride rainbow crosswalk in the city, and all this woke ideology,’” Kirk says.

“I explained to the mayor, ‘The only reason you have only received emails and letters complaining about me was because nobody else knew that this was about to happen,’” he says. “‘If people on my side knew about this, obviously, you’d be getting other emails and phone calls.’ By the next day, he did start to get that, so he put the whole thing on pause.”

Josendale told Kirk that his decision to deny him reappointment was to avoid any controversy within the small Midwest town, as well as protect Kirk and his church. Kirk also says that the mayor mentioned that he had no problem with the work that Kirk had completed during his time serving on the board, but that did not change his stance.

After the social media post and Grace Calvary Chapel’s website page were published, news began to spread within the community, stirring the public library pot.

Chair of the Buchanan County Republican Central Committee Steven Greiert voiced his opposition to Kirk’s reappointment in an email last Aug. to Mayor Josendale that was made public. The basis for his criticism on the subject is due to Kirk’s LGBTQ+ advocacy and views being a potential endangerment to children in the community.

In his email, he has called for a different public library board appointment process, as well as threatened members of City Council that side with Kirk.

His email reads, “As chair of the Buchanan County Republican Central Committee, I am speaking not only for our Executive Committee, but also for our entire membership. Other prominent Republican leaders in St. Joseph and elsewhere in Buchanan County have told me that they are in lockstep with us on this matter. I assure you that you all will be held accountable for each of your votes on every issue—but especially on this one. If in the future, any of you ever seeks election to other offices on a partisan basis within this county or as state representatives from this district, you will have to meet our organization in a formal meeting for vetting purposes. Unless the BCRCC endorses you, you cannot—by law—file and run as Republicans for those partisan offices that you may seek. By state law—we do not have to accept your filing fees.”

Shortly following Greiert’s previous statement, in the same email, he says, “If you choose to renew the appointment of Pastor Kirk and the continuation of the left-leaning majority that has existed on that Board for a long time, then we will know whom to hold accountable and whom we can no longer trust to lead the city.”

Last August, the process of appointment to the public library board was completely altered, pushing Kirk out of the door. As word continued to get around town, many jumped on either side of the equality express. While at first he was reluctant to take any legal action, Kirk decided that it would be a step in the wrong direction to let these power players win.

“It was really through encouragement of friends and family that said, ‘For the sake of the rest of us living in this community, they cannot be allowed to let that be the final word on this,’” Kirk says.

In February, Kirk filed a lawsuit in the Buchanan County Circuit Court against the City of St. Joseph, Greiert, and Blevins, also asking for Grace Calvary Chapel to lose their tax-exempt status, for defamation and discrimination, ultimately conspiring against Kirk to deny him the position.

Since filing, both Blevins and Greiert have called for a motion to dismiss, while the city has yet to take action. Kirk’s legal team amended their complaint, adding a defamation claim to both Blevins and Greiert. The next steps are for Kirk and his legal team to respond to the motion to dismiss, which would lead to a conference between both parties called Rule 26.

In this conference, they will discuss further scheduling, specifically the discovery stage—where Kirk’s legal team plans on providing emails and further information that serve as evidence of conspiracy. After the discovery process, the case will then go to motion for summary judgment or later go to a full-length trial.

“No discrimination case is easy for a plaintiff, but this has so many overtones. I have very few cases where you see the kind of emails that are so disgusting,” says Lynne Bratcher, one of Kirk’s attorneys.

“I think it’s important to recognize who the lawsuit is against. It’s the government. This isn’t a private company making some private decision,” Duggan says. “This is our government that we pay to govern us, and it’s being poisoned by Christian Nationalism. They’re letting a Pastor interject these religious ideologies into the government, which is contradictory to everything we know about the fundamentals of government.”

Kirk has taken an immense amount of heat from the St. Joseph community, which has affected his workplace, personal life, and social life as a whole. And all due in part to simply living the lifestyle that he always has.

“What was most distressing about all this was that nobody was claiming I had done anything illegal, broken any laws, moral, or otherwise. They were simply saying, ‘Because you exist in our community, we want you taken off this library board.’ I just think that’s going backward,” Kirk says. “We’ve had so much movement forward for LGBTQ people, and here are people trying to drag us backward. Only to say, ‘Because we don’t like that you exist.’ I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. We do exist, our lives are as legal as anybody else’s, and we should be able to serve on public boards and commissions like everybody else. And many of us want to, and to say, ‘You are who you are, you can’t do that,’ that’s just obviously discrimination.”

Kirk served as an elementary school teacher and a youth minister before becoming the pastor of First Christian Church. During these 30 years, he has never committed any sort of violation or illegal act that has affected his profession.

“I’ve committed decades of my life to serving young people and here I’m being attacked publicly, saying, ‘He’s a danger to people in the community.’ Now, nobody ever said that they had any evidence or an example of how I am. It’s just the fact that I exist, I was a danger,” he says.

While this entire legal process began under the idea that Kirk would spread ‘woke views’ within public library walls, the appointment that Kirk was up for was merely a financial position.

“The irony of this is that what these people protesting against Brian were afraid of, is something that he didn’t have any control over,” Duggan says. “They were afraid of drag queen story hours, they were afraid that he was going to influence some kind of agenda into the library, but Brian was doing the finances. Even if he wanted to do a drag queen story hour, that wasn’t in the purview of his responsibilities.”
“Nothing exciting goes on on a library board. It’s very mundane financial, administrative decisions,” Kirk says. “I had nothing to do on the library board with anything to do with making decisions about the content that goes on at the library.”

As the case moves forward, Kirk and his legal team hope to prove that the City of St. Joseph, Greiert, and Blevins conspired against Kirk to keep his ‘woke views’ out of the reach of library goers.

“Right now, I think we’re in a prime time to get rid of, or to make it not politically correct, to have all of these biases,” Bratcher says. “I think our country is slowly progressing to look at people equally, to treat people equally.”

Pastor Josh Blevins denied public comment when reached by The Pitch. St. Joseph City Council and Steven Greiert’s legal team did not respond to comment prior to the time of publishing. Correction: Stephanie Murphy is the Executive Director of St. Joseph County Public Library in St. Joseph County, Indiana, not St. Joseph Public Library in St. Joseph, MO.