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.

    • I'm back on my BS 🤪
      link
      fedilink
      English
      79 months ago

      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.

      • @Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        169 months ago

        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!

  • @alekwithak@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    39
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    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.

    • @bobman@unilem.org
      link
      fedilink
      -17
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      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.

      • @alekwithak@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        119 months ago

        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.

        • @creamed_eels@toast.ooo
          link
          fedilink
          69 months ago

          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.

          • @GlendatheGayWitch@lib.lgbt
            link
            fedilink
            English
            19 months ago

            Cruz seems to be hopeful that segregation (oops I mean school choice) will be allowed back in schools in the next couple years

        • @bobman@unilem.org
          link
          fedilink
          -59 months ago

          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.

  • @febra@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    369 months ago

    Fascism. In 1935 the nazis were burning books. Nowadays they banish them from the public. Same ideology. Fascism always stays the same

    • @winterayars@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      69 months ago

      The Nazis started with books about “sexual deviance”, specifically they started with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. That’s where that one famous picture of them comes from.

      They started with gay and trans people, same as here.

  • SeaJ
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    329 months ago

    The fact that they are not taking out books with heterosexual characters as well shows this is only about bigotry.

  • RubberStuntBaby
    link
    fedilink
    269 months ago

    Republicans are afraid that LGBTQ characters will humanize LGBTQ people and children might learn to empathize with them, which would reduce bigotry against them.

    • @nybble41@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      149 months ago

      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.

      • @VintageTech@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        59 months ago

        Isn’t Joseph’s pronoun in Hebrew she/her? Hence the perfume cart and the shocking response from pharoahs wife once “he” was naked?

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
    link
    fedilink
    209 months ago

    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.

    • snooggums
      link
      fedilink
      159 months ago

      Any character that isn’t actively pursuing someone of the opposite gender is clearly asexual. There is absolutely no other possibility.

      • @grysbok
        link
        English
        99 months ago

        Even those in heterosexual relationships could be bi.

    • Flying Squid
      link
      fedilink
      119 months ago

      Huck did have quite the close relationship with Jim. Just sayin’.

    • @BeanGoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      89 months ago

      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.

  • @Pratai@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    159 months ago

    Imagine being that afraid of who other people love. The world has never seen such cowardice.

    • @winterayars@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      39 months ago

      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.

  • @GiddyGap@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    109 months ago

    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.

      • 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.

        • @morphballganon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          39 months ago

          I think they said it the way they did to make it clear they were talking about the library books burning, rather than referring to the book with that title

        • @Ulv@feddit.nu
          link
          fedilink
          19 months ago

          No too my knowledge the titwl was never localised in any way besides too accomadate other languages ways of writing fahrenheit

    • @coffeeaddict@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      19 months ago

      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