Paul Johnson of Des Moines waves a flag while walking down Locust Street in the Capital City Pride parade, part of Pridefest 2013. (Photo: Charlie Litchfield/Register file photo ) 
 
 The Orange City Public Library said it's exploring legal options after a northwest Iowa man rented and then publicly burned several children's books last week. 
 
 The second annual OC Pride kicked off last Friday with a story time for kids, a schedule shows. About an hour before the event, Paul Dorr started a live Facebook video, during which he threw at least four books with LGBTQ themes that he claimed he rented from the public library into a burning trash can. 
 
 Dorr is the director of Rescue The Perishing, a religious group and website he calls a "crisis center and pro-life, pro-family movement." 
 
 The majority of the live video shows Dorr reading a blog post from the site titled "May God And The Homosexuals of OC Pride Please Forgive Us!" 
 
 Dorr declined to be interviewed. 
 
 Amanda Vazquez, the library's director, said she learned of the video on Saturday. The library "alerted the board" and spoke with authorities to determine "next steps," including possible legal action, Vazquez said. 
 
 The Orange City Police Chief confirmed that parties were discussing legal action, but declined to comment further. 
 
 "Frankly, I found it disgusting," said Mark Stringer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa. "We are disturbed to see this. 
 
 "Burning books from a public library is a clear attempt to shut down the open sharing and discussion of ideas," Stringer said. "It's one person, or maybe a group, deciding that they’re the gatekeeper of ideas for the rest of the public." 
 
 Earlier this year, a petition circulated in Orange City demanded that books with any LGBTQ content be separated from other books and labeled as such. More than 340 people signed. 
 
 The library later reorganized its books by subject rather than alphabetical order by an author's name. 
 
 Three of the four books burned by Dorr were featured in that petition earlier this year. 
 
 Those include "Two Boys Kissing," a young adult novel by David Levithan; "Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress," a children’s book about a boy who likes to wear a tangerine dress, by Christine Baldacchino; and "This Day In June," a picture book about a pride parade, by Gayle E. Pitman. The fourth book Dorr burned was Suzanne and Max Lang's "Families, Families, Families!", about nontraditional families. 
 
 "I think it's important to make a distinction between what happened early this year and what happened this weekend," said Dan Chibnall, vice president of the Iowa Library Association and Drake University STEM librarian. He said he could not speak on behalf of ILA, as the group has not yet released a statement. 
 
 The petition was "a civil way" to protest, unlike Friday's book burning, Chibnall said. 
 
 "These were one person's actions and beliefs, and they hopefully do not represent a group or the community," Chibnall said. 
 
 Burning public property on video is a poor example for children, he added. 
 
 "It is disappointing to see folks break the law in a community where we believe abiding by the law keeps everyone safe," OC Pride said in a statement Monday. 
 
 "We are thankful for the LGBTQ+ community here in NW Iowa for setting a positive example of building community in light of those who do violent, illegal things to prove a point," the statement continued. 
 
 The group is collecting donations through a GoFundMe. 
 
 Orange City is the county seat of Sioux County, known as the most conservative county in the state. U.S. Rep. Steve King represents the area, part of Iowa's 4th Congressional District. 
 
 Dorr, in the blog post, said his actions don't represent "any political party." 
 
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 A library in northwest Iowa is considering its next steps after a religious activist burned several books. 
 
 Paul Dorr from religious group Rescue the Perishing on Friday recorded a Facebook Live video outside of the Orange City Public Library prior to an event where drag queens would be reading to children as part of the Orange City Pride Festival. 
 
 “Continuing my 25-year stand for Christ I cannot stand by and let the shameful adults at the Orange City library board bring the next group of little children into their foul sexual reality without a firm resistance,” said Dorr in the video. 
 
 He then reads aloud from four LGBTQ-related childrens books that he checked out from the Orange City Library, before burning each on tape. The books include “Two Boys Kissing”, “Families, Families, Families”, “This Day in June” and “Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress." 
 
 He calls the concepts in the books things like “filthy”, “disgusting” and “shameful”. 
 
 After burning the books, he burns a tangerine dress to make a statement. 
 
 “With that let us all repent, let us turn back to Christ,” said Dorr after burning the dress. “We’ve lost our way so bad. Cry out to God. Join us. Call your elders, your pastors, plead with them. Call them to repent on the silences of whatever other sins are holding them back.” 
 
 "It should be parents and guardians who make these decisions about the values and beliefs their families embrace, not a rebel person who is going to burn public property to try and make a point." -Mark Stringer, ACLU of Iowa 
 
 Orange City Public Library officials say they’re looking at their options going forward. They’re not commenting on their reaction to Dorr, the books he chose to burn or what exactly they’ll do about it, but Director Amanda Vazquez says the library follows a national library nonprofit's standards on the types of books they stock their shelves with. 
 
 “As part of our library policy we do have the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights and ‘Freedom to Read’ and ‘Freedom to View’ statements which we have accepted as part of our library policy," Vazquez said. 
 
 The Freedom to Read statement says, "There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.” 
 
 Freedom to View condemns censorship of all mediums. 
 
 Vazquez said the library has a policy in place for damaged or overdue library materials, which she said lays out how they contact patrons to alert them they have a book that's overdue by at least a week. The policy also says patrons are financially responsible for damaged or lost property like books, laptops and tablets. 
 
 While the library isn’t commenting on Dorr’s video, the ACLU of Iowa, which advocates to protect free speech, calls Dorr’s actions "disturbing." Executive director Mark Stringer said the ACLU is “not going to hesitate to say certain points of view are dangerous.” 
 
 Stringer said burning books from a public library is “an attempt to shut down the open sharing of discussion and ideas.” 
 
 “In the case of small children it should be parents and guardians who make these decisions about the values and beliefs their families embrace,” Stringer said, "not a rebel person who is going to burn public property to try and make a point.” 
 
 Dorr did not return a request for comment.
– What was supposed to be a positive celebration of an LGBT community in Iowa was somewhat marred after a man recorded himself on Facebook burning LGBT-themed books (some of them children's volumes) he said he'd checked out of the Orange City Public Library. The Des Moines Register IDs the man as Paul Dorr, who runs a religious group called Rescue the Perishing, and he started his book-burning Friday right before an OC Pride event. "I cannot stand by and let the shameful adults at the Orange City library board bring the next group of little children into their foul sexual reality without a firm resistance," Dorr said in the video, per Iowa Public Radio. He hurled insults like "filthy" and "shameful" at what appeared to be four books he proceeded to burn, along with a tangerine-colored dress. "I found it disgusting," Mark Stringer, executive director of the ACLU of Iowa, tells the Des Moines Register of Dorr's actions. Stringer adds that someone burning books from a public library is akin to "deciding that they're the gatekeeper of ideas for the rest of the public." The Register notes that three of the books Dorr set on fire were on a petition that circulated earlier this year asking the library to either ban or separate LGBT books from all the others. The library did eventually reorganize its books by category instead of alphabetically by author name. The library says there may be legal action against Dorr. (A Florida book burning ended up destroying 10 homes.)