Jacob Ogles
Representatives have advanced to the floor legislation that sponsors say will plug loopholes that allow pornography in schools. Critics, meanwhile, believe the bill will expand book bans.
The House Education & Employment Committee approved a bill (HB 1539) that would revise a law on challenging books that are “harmful to minors” regardless of whether they hold literary value.
That could challenge the application of the Miller Test, a free speech standard rooted in a 1973 Supreme Court ruling. A landmark decision written by former Chief Justice Warren Burger allowed for censorship of obscene materials that violate community standards, but includes in any evaluation whether a work as a whole contains “literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
Rep. Doug Bankson, an Apopka Republican, said that framework has allowed some books with inappropriate content to remain on bookshelves even as Florida has tried to remove pornographic works from schools.
“We’re not talking about something that has classical, historic, literary value,” Bankson said. “We’re talking about if within that there is something we have all agreed that is truly poisonous to the minds of our children.”
But Democrats on the committee said the legislation would advance an already embarrassing policy of book banning in Florida’s schools. PEN America already reports that Florida leads the nation in yanking books off school shelves, accounting for 73% of all book banning incidents in the country in the second half of 2023.
“We should not be creating law upon law upon law that does demoralize our educators,” said Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Boca Raton Democrat. “That does make it difficult for them to make any decision about how to teach a child a difficult subject. Should 10-year-olds be reading what my mom would have called smut? No, and no teacher and no librarian is pushing that on them.”
Some activists speaking at the meeting disagreed. Julie Gebhards, a Tampa mother who has spoken against certain books at local schools, brought a copy of “Identical,” a young adult novel by Ellen Hopkins. Gebhards’ copy was brimming with stickered notes to mark pages with sexually explicit passages. She then showed a copy of “Blankets,” a celebrated graphic novel that includes nudity and a sex scene.
Critics say the legislation sends Florida further down the road of censoring material in schools and restricting access to important work with different political views about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Quinn Diaz of Equality Florida said the legislation would create a “dangerous erosion of constitutional standards that could drastically increase book bannings in Florida’s classrooms.” Diaz said Florida had banned 4,500 books last year alone, and suggested that the state does not need more material taken away.
“This bill seeks to address a topic that is exhaustively covered by state law, but in doing so, would reject a long-standing Supreme Court standard to prohibit consideration of a material’s serious literary and scientific value, lowering the threshold for obscenity determinations,” Diaz said.
But GOP lawmakers said the problem was not how many books were banned, but that the need was there at all. Rep. Taylor Yarkosky characterized the battle against pornography as one for the next generation’s very souls.
“This is pure evil, in my opinion,” Yarkosky said of the books in question.
“And they get up there and say all these comments and all these explanations. Well, they’re distortions and distractions from what is really going on. The Bible says in First Corinthians that God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. And nothing that they’re saying is peaceful or clarity. It is confusing calamity, chaos and discontentment to the 10th power, which, by biblical definition, is evil.”
19 comments
Ron Ogden
April 17, 2025 at 11:42 am
Pornography is elemental and clear; literary value rests in the conscience of the beholder.
School libraries are not places where the First Amendment reigns. It is wholly debatable whether permanent media like books is the same as speech. The amendment reads “freedom of speech” and speech does not remain. School libraries are places where community standards reign, and such standards are set by the majority.
JD
April 17, 2025 at 1:03 pm
Relax your Sphintcer Ogden. Just because you cannot grok cultural value, doesn’t mean you get to deprive students of such.
Janice Evans
April 17, 2025 at 4:36 pm
I ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ɪ’ᴅ ʙᴇ ᴀʙʟᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ ʙᴜᴛ ᴍʏ ʙᴜᴅᴅʏ ᴍᴀᴋᴇs ᴏᴠᴇʀ $13,453 ᴀ ᴍᴏɴᴛʜ ᴅᴏɪɴɢ ᴛʜɪs ᴀɴᴅ sʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴠɪɴᴄᴇᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴛʀʏ. sᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄᴀsʜ ɪɴ ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʙʏ
Go ON my ProFILE
EARL PITTS AMERICAN
April 17, 2025 at 6:44 pm
Thanks, JD, for your wacky followup to Ron.
By coming behind Ron and me, EARL PITTS AMERICAN, with your genius wacky “Fake Leftist Commentary” you make both of our “Golden Nuggetts of Sage Wisdom” appear even more Sage and Wise.
Keep up the Great Work, JD, and I would never try to “Spell Check” you as that is what “Dook 4 Brains Leftys” do.
My man, JD, feel free to spell “Sphincter” any way you want.
Yours truley, EARL PITTS AMERICAN
JD
April 17, 2025 at 9:51 pm
Aw – Shitts, you care! Bless your heart.
JD
April 17, 2025 at 9:56 pm
And it was intentional as Sphinkter is the German spelling for you Nazi’s. I mistyped the k for a c.
Michael K
April 17, 2025 at 4:44 pm
Huh? The great playwright August Wilson called the Pittsburgh Carnegie Public Library his university. Wilson dropped out of school in the 10th grade, and began a self-directed education at his local library – and the rest is history for one of America’s greatest artists.
To say that libraries are not places of free speech is a horrifying misconception of why libraries exist and who they serve. Great libraries are vast reservoirs of knowledge and unlimited worlds of ideas. Like many a young person, I found refuge in libraries and trust in librarians who opened doors that I might not otherwise ever know existed. Librarians are unsung heroes in my book. They need to be supported, not attacked.
PeterH
April 17, 2025 at 11:50 am
Again! Who gets to decide what is and is not appropriate? More Florida Freedumb!
Ron Ogden
April 17, 2025 at 12:59 pm
The majority of those who meet the criteria, of which being an adult citizen without being a convicted felon is about all there is. The other basic requirement, that voters identify themselves according to a common standard, is merely clerical.
Michael K
April 17, 2025 at 4:54 pm
Speaking of convicted felons, the one currently living in the White House does not meet your criteria.
I think you need to dig deeper in to Miller:
(1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
(2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Go ahead and twist yourself into a pretzel to explain “prurient interest.”
Ron Ogden
April 18, 2025 at 7:16 am
““[i]t is neither realistic nor constitutionally sound to read the First Amendment as requiring that the people of Maine or Mississippi accept public depiction of conduct found tolerable in Las Vegas, or New York City.” Thus reads Miller.
In other words, local standards prevail. Since they do, and since their power depends on their status, the fact that one set of standards applies to a Florida school library while another applies to a Greenwich Village wh…house is constitutionally sound.
Michael K
April 18, 2025 at 8:15 am
One little detail you forget: we are all Americans. We all have federal Constitutional protections. What you describe sounds like a New Confederacy. Miller is the test. Go ahead and apply it.
Ron Ogden
April 18, 2025 at 10:35 am
And those federal protections called “community standards” apply in communities. Local communities, as you read above. Those of you who trust that your embarrassing little peccadilloes will get over washed by the chaos that is endemic to this nation will just have to realize that you can get away with it as long as you don’t piss off your neighbors to the point where they make an issue of it, a la’ Moms for Liberty. Read your porn all you want. H–l, teach it to you kids if you want in the privacy of your own home, but keep it away from where my little kids can get hold of it because you told ’em it was cool.
JD
April 17, 2025 at 1:02 pm
I cannot wait for them to take the Bible out of schools and any derative works like the 10 commandments.
Foghorn Leghorn
April 17, 2025 at 1:38 pm
Let’s lose the Muzzy books while we are at it as well. You okay with that?
JD
April 17, 2025 at 6:26 pm
Let’s see if this version gets past the auto-moderation.
Nice try. School should be secular except maybe for high school, where some academic and cultural context makes sense. But grade school and middle school? Not age-appropriate.
And for the record, out of the three major religions in the U.S., the Bible has the most p0rnographic material by far. Then the Torah. The Quran? Almost none.
So your little ploy about “Muzzy” books falls flat. Maybe do some research (or God forbid actually read a book). Pun intended.
JD
April 17, 2025 at 6:27 pm
Let’s see if this version gets past the auto-moderation – last one I’m trying.
Nice try. School should be secular except maybe for high school, where some academic and cultural context makes sense. But grade school and middle school? Not age-appropriate.
And for the record, out of the three major religions in the U.S., the B!ble has the most p0rnographic material by far. Then the T0rah. The Qur3n? Almost none.
So your little ploy about “Muzzy” books falls flat. Maybe do some research (or G-d forbid actually read a book). Pun intended.
JD
April 17, 2025 at 11:25 pm
It’s about porno, no religion, but I’d be OK with that. Oh and the Muzzy books don’t have any porno in it like the Bible. Nice try. If people would read the book instead of banning them.
ScienceBLVR
April 17, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Rep. Taylor Yarkosky characterized the battle against pornography as one for the next generation’s very souls.
Huh? Back in the dark ages, I had to get to the National Geographic before my teen brother snagged it and hid away in his room and Mom wouldn’t have ever let a Playboy in the house. But we are talking about 2025, the days of Only Fans, HBO, and occasionally, although still rare, full frontal male nudity right there on television. These are books, in a library! Remember, what the Dormouse said, Feed your head, feed your head..