Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

> The public library in rural Donnelly, Idaho, at only 1,024 square feet, had no practical way to create an enforceable “adults only” section and no budget to defend against lawsuits. Therefore, to comply with the law, they decided to make the entire library for adults only. The library has banned minors from entering the library (even to use the bathroom) unless they are accompanied by an adult, or holding a waiver from their parents.

This is absurd. It does look like they're suing, with help from a lot of publishers, at least.

I spent a lot of time after school in the library to avoid my abusive cult guardians at home. If this avenue hadn't been available to me in my small town, I'd likely have committed suicide. But, I'm an atheist, so me committing suicide would probably be seen as a win for these evangelical freaks.

Yeah, me too. It’s very chilling to see the resurgence of a very broad conception of parental rights, which can in some cases permit the wholesale physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children without recourse.

It’s hard to talk about it without being accused of hyperbole, but some of these proposed laws come very close to making children the property of their parents. As someone who grew up in an abusive household, that makes me exceedingly uncomfortable.

You design libraries? Fascinating!

The Republican party has worked to kill public libraries and public education for years, so this fits right in line.

I've talked to enough people who explicitly believe that children are chattel (sometimes in the same breath as complaining about abuse they suffered from their own parents) to know this isn't hyperbole.

An ADA compliant bathroom is almost 200sqft. And they will need at least 2 of them. So now that 1000sqft is now 600sqft. And they still need a place to store and process books, reading rooms, etc.

Also there's a big difference between a general "children's room" and strictly enforced "adults only" and "for children" section, with risk of costly lawsuits if some extremist parent thinks the kid saw something "obscene". My library had a children's section and even some toys, but I could walk in and go anywhere.

Since I'm not American I don't have a good idea of what 1024 sq feet is: it's about 95m². I laughed out loud when I realised just how small it is. To suggest this is large enough for a strictly separated adult and children section is profoundly unserious.

> The ADA Standards, on the other hand, do not address the number of toilet rooms or fixtures required for a facility, but instead specify which ones must be accessible where provided.

https://www.access-board.gov/ada/guides/chapter-6-toilet-roo...

For what it's worth, chatgpt and random reddit comments claim you'd need closer to 50sqft for a compliant bathroom. Maybe that's nonsense.

In any case, their Facebook page is full of recent pictures of children in the library, so it seems that they were indeed unsurprisingly just posturing.

I shared this experience before on a recent thread about the role librarians play in counterculture and a user made a throwaway account in order to tell me to kill myself all sorts of creative ways and that he's glad I was abused, etc. etc.

I've lived in several houses that had 2 bedrooms, a bathroom (with tub/shower), a kitchen, and laundry closet that were 8-900 sq ft, so to me it seems profoundly unserious to suggest you can't fit a small adult only room (think more like a walk in closet) in that space.

Ignoring that, they don't even need a room. They just can't let kids access it. A locked armoire near the checkout ought to suffice.