The most gross libertine and the most puritan censor have one trait in common — sooner or later, they’ll both go too far.
That’s partly why Gov. Ron DeSantis recently needed to sign a bill to put some limits on a fairly new law helping Floridians get library books and teaching materials removed if they consider them too risqué for public schools. Under the law, an objection triggers a review during which a challenged book must be locked away while school authorities decide if it’s too titillating for curious young minds, or has offsetting educational value.
The law, enacted when the governor was on the front lines of the culture wars during his campaign for president, immediately earned Florida an unfair reputation for banning books. That’s a quick and easy description that pleases DeSantis’ critics — First Amendment absolutists, including most newspaper editorialists, who lampooned him and Republican lawmakers as a bunch of blue-nosed prudes pandering to a baying mob of semi-literate busybodies bullying local school boards in the guise of protecting children.
If timing is everything in politics, the law hit the national news at a bad time last year. Separately, there was the governor’s feud with drag shows. One school in Tallahassee embarrassed the education profession by caving to some parents who were blushing about photos of Michelangelo’s David sculpture. And then there was that whole “don’t say gay” flap about classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.
There were obvious constitutional problems with the book law, not to mention overkill. Objections to classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or a children’s book about two male penguins nurturing a baby bird, lent credence to claims that conservative Republicans were scared of the know-nothings.
So in this year’s legislative session, the House and Senate gave DeSantis a face-saving way out of the furor without admitting that he’d overreacted to the most-strident voices of angry parents. The new law says you can still complain to your school board about books but, if you don’t have kids in public schools, you can only file one challenge each month.
Well, OK, so if your local middle school subscribes to Hustler, you can meet the postman there every month and — whether you have a kid enrolled or not — get the magazine hidden away. Beyond that, you can butt out and let the teachers teach, the librarians stock their shelves and the students learn.
Absurd hypotheticals notwithstanding, there really has been some fairly raw stuff brought to light by groups like Moms for Liberty, the band of conservative activists who’ve bedeviled school boards the past few years. Social media sites like X, formerly Twitter, have clips of parents being stopped at public meetings from reading aloud materials that your local newspaper won’t even describe, much less reprint.
And there are no “banned” books, however badly DeSantis’ critics liken him to a modern-day Savonarola. If the government chooses to buy one book and reject another, it is not “banning” the later title, it’s exercising its discretion to spend tax money.
DeSantis and his supporters say they’re empowering parents and giving them a voice in education, and locally elected school board members are understandably shy about disagreeing with them.
School leaders need the guts to say, “Sorry you don’t like Hemingway or Toni Morrison or ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ but there are unpleasant things in the world your kids need to learn. …”
And those same school authorities need the backbone to tell the other side, “Yes, we’ll teach kids to treat gay or non-binary people with dignity and respect, but we don’t need to get into the anatomical mechanics of every act.”
That’s the trouble with culture wars. Each side thinks it’s right, and neither will concede the other side even has a point.
Bill Cotterell is a retired capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com
