The First Amendment doesn’t just protect what you say. It also protects your right to hear what others say. It guarantees a right to published information. It protects a whole lot of stuff ce…

A lawsuit, filed by patrons of a county library in Arkansas, has been allowed to move forward by a federal court. The First Amendment lawsuit plausibly alleges the library’s decision to move anything determined to be “LGBTQ” from the children’s section to the adult’s section violates the First Amendment right to equitable access to information. (via Courthouse News Service)

Here’s how this started, according to the decision [PDF] that moves this lawsuit forward:

[I]n late 2022 or early 2023 the Crawford County Library System implemented a policy under which its library branches must remove from their children’s sections all books containing LGBTQ themes, affix a prominent color label to those books, and place them in a newly-created section called the “social section.” Plaintiffs allege this policy was imposed on the Library System by the Crawford County Quorum Court in response to political pressure from constituents who objected, at least partly on religious grounds, to the presence of these books in the children’s section.

  • geosocoOP
    0•1 year ago

    They also have fun with it. Their goal is to waste your time. So even if you have fun with it, you’re still boosting the behavior so they can go back to their corners and share it with others, who then also come back.

    There’s a reason so many spaces just rely on banning. Your time is better spent sharing reasonable articles for the people who actually are semi-coherent, and you’re going to have more effect doing that.

      • geosocoOP
        0•1 year ago

        My point isn’t to not argue for the existence of human beings, just be selective about who you argue with and how that draws attention to them. You can do that without replying to them to bring them back. Just reference their name without @ing them. You can share this info without that.

        “don’t feed the trolls” not enlightened centerist nonsense, and there aren’t good-faith moderators on lemmy.world. This has been around for 30+ years at this point, and people do it because it works, and it’s been researched. Removing or diminishing their voice is the only thing that helps, regardless of how its done, and there’s research on this plus tons of experience of people modding communities.

          • geosocoOP
            -1•1 year ago

            Not research, but cool.

            I’m not hell-bent on people pushing back against folks arguing against it – I LOVE that, and I love that you want to do that. I’m against people doing it in ways that boost their voices and what they’re saying and giving them more platform to do it. I gave you a few options. You can also dig up news articles about this issue and post them.

            But you do you.