News @lemmy.world stopthatgirl7 @kbin.social 1 yr. ago

Florida school district orders librarians to purge all books with LGBTQ characters

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.

78 comments

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.
- 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"!
- 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.
- 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!
- 2 Samuel 1:26
  (David) I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.
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.
Fascism. In 1935 the nazis were burning books. Nowadays they banish them from the public. Same ideology. Fascism always stays the same
- The Nazis started with books about "sexual deviance", specifically they started with the . That's where that one famous picture of them comes from.
  
  They started with gay and trans people, same as here.
- "They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em."
The fact that they are not taking out books with heterosexual characters as well shows this is only about bigotry.
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.
Republicans are afraid that LGBTQ characters will humanize LGBTQ people and children might learn to empathize with them, which would reduce bigotry against them.
This is about homophobia not being appropriate or not.
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.
- 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.
When is DeSantis holding the book burning?
Fuck censorship - posted for the kids of Charlotte County.
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 👀
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.
Florida has really turned into crap over the past few years. Politically, it wasn't great to begin with, but it has certainly gone south for a while now.
- It's a school board which afaik had nothing to do with DeSantis. Well, maybe DeSantis pushed passed the kind of less that authorized school boards play around like this.
  
  But this is more of a direct result of residents of the county voting this kind of people for school board (or... only a specific group attending the ballot and others sleeping) and the people elected by the citizens in that county doing banning things like that.
  
  I think US could be a much better place if simply everyone went to ballot
So what happens to the books that get removed?

Trash? Donated to public libraries?
- Something something Celsius 232.8
  
  Wait, was the book title actually localized to Celsius when it was exported? In America the original book is titled Fahrenheit 451, which honestly rolls off the tongue fairly well.
Wow purging lgbtq books in Florida while Ontario is purging any book written before 2008... can we all please stop purging books it never ends well!
Uh, “LOL 1A?”
- "But the gays are yucky and the founding fathers obviously meant no Constitution for yucky people" /s
It's alright people, we can pretend that portion of the population just simply doesn't exist and all will go back as it was in 1950.
- Well jeez, at least it only sucked for gay people in 1950!
i'm a christian and know the bible well. These types of actions do not match how Jesus instructed us to act. When asked by frustrated tax payers whether they should continue paying the unfair taxes, jesus looked at the coin, asked "who's face is on the coin?" It was Caesar. And he said, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesars, and give to God what is God's."

You see, they thought he was going to affirm their desire to revolt and stop paying their taxes, because in their view, jesus was a rebel and of course he would support people rising up to collectively cut off the flow of tax money to the worst government the world had ever seen? No. Jesus said, no don't do that. Just give it to them. Play the long game. Give up this battle, but win the war.

Similarly, when I as a christian am asked by another christian "shouldn't we ban these books? they have sinful activity"....I say, no. let the books stay where they are. it's a library. if what you believe is true, then mere pieces of paper with drawings and text in them should change nothing. Let God sort it out later. You just live your life.

Jesus was much more interested in the inner life of each person, and he made a specific point of telling people to mind their own business and get their own house in order before worrying about everyone else. He also was very mindful of sin, telling us to "run" from it, almost like harmful radiation. Don't try to change it, don't try to interact with it, don't even try to fight it. Just run away, get away, whatever you have to do.

So perhaps Jesus teaching for parents worried about sinful activities in books, would be to take their kid out of school, and create their own school that doesn't teach that. Which is why I support school vouchers. We as christians should at least be consistent, and our actions should match those of Jesus. These people out there pushing for more intervention, more laws, more authoritarian control towards a theocracy, are IMO not very christ-like. Christians already created the ultimate theocracy in the Catholic church and we all saw how that turned out. We should have learned our lessons from history, but instead people just repeat the same mistakes over and over. And that's all people, not just christians.
- children have the right to a proper education and we as society have a responsibility to provide it. Religious private schooling is a failure in that regard and should not be permitted, much less funded at the expense of public schools and the children who attend them. Voucher programs rob from the budget of already underfunded (supposedly) secular public schools
  
  partially disagree, but i respect your opinion, and the way you presented it.
- I don't share your faith (or even really have one that's got a name), but I respect your tone and the thought you've put into this.
  
  I share the other commenter's dislike of charter schools.
  
  if what you believe is true, then mere pieces of paper with drawings and text in them should change nothing. Let God sort it out later. You just live your life.
  
  This is largely what I believe. As long as the person isn't hurting someone else, leave it to the higher power to sort it out. Asserting control over another's life is actively in the way of their own life's journey.
  
  I don't believe a book that benevolently presents a character that's LGBTQ is going to change anyone's gender identity or sexuality.
  
  I was called "Wanda" in high school by some close friends because I didn't act like the typical teenaged boy (read: I wasn't being a jackass). I'm still a straight guy despite having that (friendly) nickname for a few years that was a totally different gender.
  
  I trust the kids here to do the right thing for themselves. We don't as adults need to limit their world view, especially teenagers; that just seems like a recipe for resentment. i.e. just leave the books alone, it's not a problem that needs solving.
Cancel culture done right. Pun intended.

You've viewed 78 comments.