2 librarians were fired after the board mistook an autism symbol for a Pride display. They’re suing.

"I do not want any kind of rainbow display especially in this month." Imagine hating the idea of diversity so much that any kind of rainbow offends you. These people won't stop until the entire world is gray.

“I do not want any kind of rainbow display especially in this month. We have a conservative town and as a library do not need to make political statements (see Target and Budlight as negative examples). I certainly do not want the library to promote LGBTQ agendas.”

Ah, and removing them is not a political statement?

I'm sure they would also happily attempt elimination of neurodivergent people.

I don't understand how having a rainbow nearby isn't protected by 1st amendment rights.

I am old enough to remember the rainbow colors being a secret way for the community to find each other. We'd put a small rainbow on our cars, or other places and people of our community knew what that meant.

Now that we are more out of the closet, hateful bigots know what the rainbow flag means too. This is an expected downside to our communities progress. But we will never go back in the closet.

Imagine being so afraid of The Big Gay that you fire two people for being part of another community that uses boldly colored stripes in their logo, a community that literally has a documented statistical preference for bold primary colors and patterns. Imagine your hate being so enormous that it can't hit just one group of vulnerable minority children.

EDIT: Imagine posting before your caffeine kicks in and having to fix three different typos.

When you accidentally discriminate against the “wrong” minority

They're suing.

I hope they win. If the basis for their firing was the presumption that they were gay (hint: being gay is a protected class, you can't fire someone for being gay), this would be an open-and-shut case of employment discrimination.

But if it's all a big dumb misunderstanding and they're not gay (and not part of that particular protected class) but they're still fired over it, let me remind you that being autistic is a never-ending ordeal of being misunderstood, often mixed with a sense of justice that could be characterized as white-hot.

...or at least, my sense of justice about this might be in the range of over-wrought, or just blazing.

These fucking morons don't even know what they're banning... Really teaching everyone how important education really is, and why they don't want people educated.

It's so weird to be outraged about this stuff enough to fire 2 of your neighbors in a small town.

LGBTQ people existing is not political, it is a fact. And I am sure even in that conservative town there are LGBTQ people who would want to read books about them or books to help them. Yea, helping other LGBTQ people is the gay agenda.

On June 22, Splitter, a temporary summer library employee, complained about the display to Lancaster, saying she found the “gay Pride” symbol offensive and going into “an anti-LGBT diatribe” even though Lancaster explained that the infinity symbol represented neurodiversity and autism.

I have to wonder if this person saw the rainbow and applied for a temp position just to complain.

So much for not wanting to have negative press, now some random guy in Ohio even hates the place

So this is the Sterling Free Public Library that did this? The library at this website here?

https://sterling.scklslibrary.info/

I wonder what would happen if these ignorant bigots faced a proverbial shit storm of backlash from across the country every time they tried to pull hateful shit like this?

Even if the symbol was a Pride display, they should be suing.

Your ignorance is gonna get you, yeah yeah, your ignorance is gonna get you....

Ugh I live close to this town. It's only like a four hour drive.

Let's get a USA chant going

The Board be like :

art source : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/BXY32D

Damn, I don’t know whether I should be outraged at trying to censor a library or at succeeding based on making a mistake. How is censoring a library even a thing?

(Yes, I live in an area that respects knowledge , freedom and individual rights, why do you ask?)

MAYBE, just don't do activism in your place of work. for anything. especially if it's a publically funded thing.