'Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress' was one of the books he destroyed

LAST year Paul Robert Dorr decided to protest an LGBT pride event by burning four gay-themed books belonging to Orange City Library in Iowa.

Well, this week, the 63-year old bigot was found guilty of criminal mischief and ordered to pay $125 in fines and court costs.

But here’s the kicker: he’s actually made a profit out of his vandalism. In July he launched a fundraiser to cover his legal expenses, and 15 supporters of his bigotry were stupid enough to cough up $1,030.

Dorr posted a video to Facebook last October in which he denounced the Orange City library for having the books and threw them into a burning barrel.

He fought to have the charge dismissed, saying he was singled out for prosecution because of his anti-gay message. A judge rejected his argument in July, saying the only message being sent to him was “that he cannot burn books that do not belong to him.”

American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa legal director Rita Bettis Austen released a statement on the case.

Burning public library books is the destruction of ideas, and that’s reprehensible. We stand by the LGBTQ community in Orange City and the public library that serves them.

Image via Facebook

After seeing a video Dorr posted on the Internet, which showed him reducing the books to ashes, Justin Scott, above, a member and State Director for the American Atheists Iowa chapter, sprang into action and began a Facebook fundraiser to replace the books – and within 14 days he’d collected $2000.

After the  library received 200 new books, it urged Scott to repeat the exercise for others. So he requested donors to gift money to LGBTQ organisations and to local libraries. He also gave money to OC Pride, the group specifically targeted by Dorr. The organisation immediately experienced a hike in donations.

One notable contributor was James Peron, President of Moorfield Storey Institute, a libertarian think-tank. Peron said he has shipped a total of 20 DVDs and LGBTQ books to the library and also collected hundreds of dollars from GoFundMe. Most of his friends contributed.

The culmination of Dorr’s video shows the lunatic burning Two Boys Kissing, written by David Levithan, This Day in June, by Gayle E Pitman, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino and Families, Families, Families!, by Max Lang and Suzanne Lang.