A bizarre scenario unfolded at last Tuesday’s monthly Seminole County Public School board meeting. Amidst a non-stop, two-hour parade of non-agenda speakers from the audience, an occasional woman would come up to the microphone and read a passage from “a book available to all Seminole County students above 11 years old.” No title was given for the book, and no context was given for the passage. One can deduce that the age reference means the book is available in middle school libraries, but that was not usually stated.
The passages that these women read tended to cover sexual themes, sometimes with graphic descriptions of various activities involved, but the excerpts themselves were not erotic or sensual. Almost the opposite. A lot of the passages were intriguing, and I found myself wanting to know the name of the book, what the book was about, and how the passages related to the central theme or message.
Alas, no such information was forthcoming. The ladies simply read their passages until a small tone was heard, the signal that their two minutes were up. The women, many feigning reluctance with a theatrical “I really don’t want to read this, but…”, proceeded to regale the five-member board with their two-minute slice of what they considered to be prurient, pornographic, and purposeless material. The board members sat and listened respectfully, with no hints as to what was going through their minds.
As a newcomer to this spectacle, I found myself pondering the motivations behind it. What drove these presumably Christian women to stand before a largely secular audience and recite such material? Did they also share these readings with their church congregations? And I couldn’t help but feel that, in my day’s past as a Christian, such readings would have really spiced up those dull and repetitive worship services.
The following day, an Orlando Sentinel article shed some light on the matter. It turns out that a few months prior, in May 2023, the Florida Legislature, currently dominated by a Republican supermajority, passed Florida House Bill 1069. Signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis, it gave the public the right to read passages from school material they objected to. If the school board stopped the speaker and denied this speech due to content requirements, the material would be removed from the school.
The speakers at the meeting were members of “Moms for Liberty,” a group hoping to trigger this clause by getting shut down mid-reading. It seems the legislation was designed to facilitate exactly this kind of scenario.
In preparation for the meeting, Moms for Liberty had sent a list of “problematic” books to its members. Jessica Tillman, the leader of the Moms for Liberty group in Seminole County, had then urged her followers to go through the selected books and find the juiciest passages, stating as the defined goal:
“You want to read the worst of the worst of the books we gave you.”
I couldn’t help but picture dozens of Christian women, poring over piles of what they considered to be pornographic material, trying to find the very worst bits. Kind of reminded me of my high school days.
But the humor fades when you consider the implications. This isn’t just about a few prudish parents clutching their pearls over some racy literature. This is about an organized effort to censor and control what students can and cannot read.
The silver lining in this otherwise grim scenario is that this campaign has galvanized the opposition. For every member of Moms for Liberty decrying the so-called pornographic material, there were at least five speakers defending the freedom to read.
One speaker even pointed out the irony of it all by reading out some rather explicit verses from the Bible. It seems that what’s considered objectionable can be quite subjective. It’s a stark reminder that context matters, and that one person’s smut is another person’s scripture.
Prior to the meeting, I was aware of the general idea that Moms for Liberty was on a book-banning crusade, so I wrote my two-minute speech on the theme of “liberty,” and about how Moms for Liberty were for anything but liberty. In the brief time I was allotted, I managed to work in a few references:
James Madison, our fourth president, and the man often hailed as the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote that “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
And in 1905, the US Supreme Court ruled that “One person’s liberty cannot deprive his neighbors of their own liberty.”
It is often said: “Your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.”
I refined and practiced my speech in the hours before the meeting, getting it down to the point where I could finish in one minute, and fifty-four seconds. That was close, maybe too close, but I really didn’t want to cut anything else out.
Waiting in the queue to give my speech at the meeting, I took a few deep breaths in an attempt to still the lingering anxiety that has always accompanied my public speaking efforts. But I was buoyed by the sheer numbers and intensity of the many others who had already spoken against the book-banners.
Finally, it was my turn. I stepped up to the microphone and launched into my speech. There was no time for dramatic pauses or off-the-cuff remarks. Every second counted. And as I uttered my final “Thank you,” I managed to beat the dreaded two-minute tone. A small victory in the ongoing battle for free speech.
I’d love to tell you that my speech was met with thunderous applause, but the reality was far more subdued. Audience reactions were required by the rules of decorum to be limited to thumbs-up or thumbs-down gestures, or in some cases, green or red pieces of paper. So focused was I on finishing my speech within the time limit that I barely noticed the audience’s reaction.
The current state of the law and the rise of right-wing groups who are emboldened by it suggest that this spectacle is far from over. Groups like Moms For Liberty, who seem to have a skewed understanding of freedom and liberty, are a thorn in the side of democracy. They must be countered by those who truly value freedom and liberty for all Floridians, like the CFFC.
The CFFC stands with those who oppose groups like Moms For Liberty and with those who oppose repugnant right-wing campaigns that brand non-Christians and members of the LGBTQ+ community as “groomers” and “deviants.” They fight against those who seek to strip away a woman’s right to choose. It’s a battle for the very soul of our democracy, and it’s one that shows no signs of ending anytime soon.
