A Tennessee librarian is fighting back against what she’s calling “a clear act of viewpoint discrimination” as she refuses to abide by an order to move over 100 children’s/teen books with LGBTQ+ themes to the adult section.
The director of the Rutherford County Library System, which covers an area outside of Nashville, cited the First Amendment in an email to the library system’s board last week after it voted to relocate 190-plus mostly LGBTQ+ titles in response to a review of “age-appropriate” materials in the collection, The Advocate reported Saturday.
“Public libraries serve as a vital repositories of diverse ideas, both popular and unpopular,” Luanne James wrote. “Restricting access to these materials through subjective relocation or removal constitutes a violation of the community’s right to information and a direct infringement on the principles of free speech.”
The vote follows a monthslong campaign led by the board’s chair, Cody York, to protect children from what he called “gender confusion” and titles promoting LGBTQ+ stories, per Nashville’s NBC affiliate WSMV-TV.
Tens of thousands of titles in the library system were eyed in the review sparked by a heavily panned directive from Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, a response to President Donald Trump’s executive order intended to target the promotion of “gender ideology” in schools.
