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.

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.

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.

The goal is to create little Republicans.

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

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.

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.

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."

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...)

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

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

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.

"theocrats" would be more specific. fascist is a more generic term.

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.

And my step brother 👀

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.

Something something Celsius 232.8

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

"But the gays are yucky and the founding fathers obviously meant no Constitution for yucky people" /s

Well jeez, at least it only sucked for gay people in 1950!

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

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.