Faren-Hate 451

The fascism in Florida under GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is getting almost comically dark, as state lawmakers want to jail publishers and strip all school funding over any book deemed "sexually explicit" in Florida classrooms.

 

Publishers could face jail time and multi-thousand-dollar fines under a new GOP-led bill that seeks to crack down on the distribution of “sexually explicit materials” to schools and educational agencies.

A bill introduced this month by Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) would amend the federal criminal code to prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing “sexually explicit material” — a term that the legislation does not clearly define — to an elementary school or high school.

Publishing houses that violate the proposed law would be subject to a maximum $500,000 fine, while individuals in the company’s higher management would face similar monetary penalties, as well as up to five years imprisonment.

Mills’s bill, a copy of which was shared with The Hill, would also withhold federal funds from elementary or secondary schools that obtain or distribute published materials that contain a “sexually explicit visual depiction of any kind,” including photographs or drawings until those materials are “relinquished or destroyed” by the school.

State and local educational agencies, including school boards or boards of education, would also be barred from providing schools with books, magazines, newspapers or e-books that contain content deemed sexually explicit.

Restrictions do not apply to materials with “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” according to the bill.

Mills said in a statement earlier this month that his bill is a response to what he described as a coordinated effort by Democrats to “sexualize children in schools across the U.S.”

“The battlefield for the future of our society is being fought within the classrooms of American schools,” Mills said.

“From school board meetings to new representation in local, state, and federal levels, Americans are waking up to the grim reality of woke indoctrination guised as a normal education,” he said. “No more.”

 

If this passes, I expect school libraries will be quickly emptied out as "sexually explicit" will mean whatever the fascists want it to mean, and we get into Fahrenheit 451 territory real fast here. Which is what these assholes want, for publishers to stop publishing books and for school libraries to stop having books for fear that they'll be in violation and face prison and half-mil fines.

It's ludicrous that this is even a thing, but here we are, deep in the middle of the fascist backlash against an America that dared to elect a Black president and Black VP.