Librarians in public schools in Charlotte County, Florida, were instructed by the school district superintendent to remove all books with LGBTQ characters or themes from school and classroom libraries. The guidance by Charlotte County Superintendent Mark Vianello and the school board’s attorney, Michael McKinley, was obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP) through a public records request and shared with Popular Information. FFTRP requested “electronic records of district and school decisions regarding classroom and library materials.” In response, FFTRP received a document memorializing a July 24 conversation between Vianello and district librarians, known in Florida as media specialists.
So taking away those books is supposed to stop all kids from turning gay?
Why haven’t all the thousands of straight character books turned gay kids straight?Enough of this stupidity.
Nah. It’s supposed to make all LGBTQ+ kids feel like they are alone and that something is wrong with them so they hide who they are and are easier for others to manipulate.
There’s an even more sinister intention behind making queer children think they are alone and teaching them that they are fundamentally broken and that no one will ever accept them for who they are.
What is the intention you’re alluding to?
Queer children who are unable to find acceptance often take their lives. This isn’t some unknown fact either, it’s an intended consequence of the transphobic hate movement.
If you find yourself googling art from YA fiction, you’ll soon realize that the straight characters have a better chance of turning the gay kids gayer.
I’d guess the district is practicing CYA given all the fucked up legislation Desantis is signing into law. School admins are notorious cowards.
Maybe the idea is to stop some kids from realizing or accepting they’re gay.
And they probably think back when the majority of people through history were illiterate, there must have been absolutely zero chance of LGBTQ+ people.
Is the goal to create places so inhospitable to open minds, that those who possess a shred of empathy flee, creating a conservative gravity well of votes? Is that even sustainable
I don’t know whether to be appalled or hope that the gravity well becomes large enough it generates an event horizon that no stupidity could cross out of.
'Wish I could upvote a second time for great use of the term “event horizon”!
“We’re leaving.”
“No, we can’t leave. Our orders are specific.”
“Rescue the liberals, salvage what’s left of Florida. The liberals are dead, doctor. Florida killed them.”
“Where we’re going you don’t need books to read.”
Something something accretion disk
The goal is to create little Republicans.
I have a high school age kid in rural FL. If that is the intended effect, it’s not working.
They haven’t finished fucking with the educational system yet.
I work at a high school (in a library, actually) in California, and we’ve had student walkouts for much less. Are the angry students doing any major protesting that you’ve seen? Or are the schools cracking down so hard already and they don’t want to risk it, or a high enough percentage of kids are assholes so they mock kids who care and it keeps those kids from protesting? I’m sure there’s a lot happening that we don’t hear about, so I’m curious what it’s like for Gen Z who overall doesn’t seem to stand for bigotry in general.
That’s half the goal.
The other half is to make areas so hostile that the people who can’t flee just keep their heads down and stay closeted so no one hurts them.
And to increase suicides
Florida the fascist state.
Don’t forget to throw out the Bible!
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
Uh oh! Ham and woke Noah better not be in any elementary schools teaching kids about drunk gay incestuous nudity.
Genesis 19:
4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
There’s a whole town of gays in this book!
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Good point, we have to ban most of Plato, particularly Phaedrus and Symposium.
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The fact that they are not taking out books with heterosexual characters as well shows this is only about bigotry.
Please support Foundation 451 and consider donating. It is a Florida teacher-led organization that has already provided thousands of banned books to Florida students and is opening up banned book libraries all over the state.
Meh. Teachers should just lead themselves to different states and let the effects take care of florida.
If they want to be a bunch of uneducated slaves, go right ahead.
Do you have any idea what teachers in Florida make? That aside, pushing all the good teachers out of the state is exactly what DeSantis wants. They’ve drastically lowered the qualifications necessary to be a teacher. You seem to understand why. Why do you think they’ll stop with Florida.
The republican long game is to make public education so terrible and underfunded the next step is to abolish it. Then it’s expensive private Christian schools for those that can afford it, which is less and less each year, and sotdrt for the rest, which has very little to no oversight depending on what state you live in. Then straight from “graduation” to for-profit prisons, the military, or wage-slaving to make billionaires richer.
Cruz seems to be hopeful that segregation (oops I mean school choice) will be allowed back in schools in the next couple years
Why do you think they’ll stop with Florida.
Because other places will have learned from florida’s mistakes, and they’ll be better educated.
That’s very optimistic, but nooses never loosen. You have to cut them off entirely.
can somebody actually do something about the continually encroaching evil? i feel like you shouldn’t be able to demand that
Mass organisation would work. Protests and strikes. Not just from LGBT+ people, but from the population broadly. But that seems unlikely, sadly.
I keep thinking about the 1960s and the feds. Florida has to he breaking federal laws.
The only person you can rely on to stop them is yourself first, then second everyone else.
Start by killing the Nazi in your own head, to paraphrase a slogan. Then oppose them and find others to oppose them.
Only one thing could have broken our movement — if the adversary had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed, with the most extreme brutality, the nucleus of our new movement.
A paraphrase/translation from Hitler.
Understand them. Do not mistake their intentions. Do not think they only want what they say they want or that they will only use their current methods to get it. They want genocide and they’ll use whatever means they think they can get away with to get it.
That means opposing them at every turn everywhere you see them in your own life and encouraging others to do the same
I also think Hitler suffered from a lack of imagination. It’s not only crushing their movement that will stop them, though that is vital. In the long term, and we may still be at a moment where we can worry about the long term, building a world that takes their power away is also a solution. Even better is building a world where they couldn’t take power to begin with.
Build a world where LGBT people are not an easy target and the fascists will stop having them to be an easy (first) target. Build a world where low grade scam artists like Desantis can’t take over a state and it’ll make the next Desantis have to do that much more work. (Admittedly that probably does require abandoning our current democracy…)
Stop having kids. Reject capitalism. Arm yourselves and encourage others to arm themselves. Learn to live agrarian. Starve the beast.
Seriously – what does Florida export? What is the backbone of their economy? It’s not iPhones and Buicks.
I’d take out all the books that have any characters that don’t mention their sexuality and say that I’m protecting kids because Huck Finn could be gay.
Any character that isn’t actively pursuing someone of the opposite gender is clearly asexual. There is absolutely no other possibility.
Even those in heterosexual relationships could be bi.
What if they’re in a relationship but a little bit or sometimes sad about it? Could be around/ace/gay!
Huck did have quite the close relationship with Jim. Just sayin’.
Oh, I’m sure they’ll be banning Mark Twain soon enough.
They’d probably be fine with that. Honestly, they probably wish they could just shut the whole place down; you’d be doing them a favor.
This is about homophobia not being appropriate or not.
Fuck censorship - posted for the kids of Charlotte County.
When is DeSantis holding the book burning?
Damn. Republicans really are fascist. As if we didn’t know already but God damn.
“theocrats” would be more specific. fascist is a more generic term.
Theocracy can in theory be democratic and progressive, thus the term “Christofascism” to denote the xenophobic and oppressive nature.
Jesus told me to love my brother 👀
Allegories aside, the Bible definitely has a few LGBTQ characters, even if they’re not portrayed in a very positive light. I suppose that means they’ll be banning the Bible from school libraries? Not to mention a fair amount of historical literature… including anything featuring Leonardo da Vinci, Florence Nightingale, King James (yes, that King James), William Shakespeare, King Richard I, or Julius Caesar.
It will be interesting to see whether this makes the history classes easier, for lack of material to cover, or harder, for lack of references.
Isn’t Joseph’s pronoun in Hebrew she/her? Hence the perfume cart and the shocking response from pharoahs wife once “he” was naked?
And my step brother 👀
Republicans are afraid that LGBTQ characters will humanize LGBTQ people and children might learn to empathize with them, which would reduce bigotry against them.
Imagine being that afraid of who other people love. The world has never seen such cowardice.
They’re just afraid of love in general. All fascists are. LGBT people just get it worse and (since they’re minorities and thus easy to target) first.
