Harry Shannon
Florida schools continue to allow parents to decide which books can remain in the libraries of the state’s public schools.
Since Governor Ron DeSantis announced the new policy, many groups, especially Christian organizations, have demanded the removal of most books from the shelves.
This includes almost all the English classics. When asked why, the Governor’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, pointed out their use of the word ‘gay.’ She gave some examples:
In Chapter VI of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote of ‘gay crowds.’
Chapter XXIII of Middlemarch includes the sentence: ‘In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.’ Pushaw said: ‘It’s clear how perverted this is, especially when you realize that it was written by a woman pretending to be a man by using a man’s name. No doubt she cross-dressed and took part in drag events. In fact,’ added Pushaw, ‘that’s why schools are throwing out all books by the so-called George Eliot. If I had my way, they would be burned.’
And students can no longer read in Chapter 41 of Pride and Prejudice about ‘the streets of that gay bathing-place covered with officers’ and ‘tents … crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet.’ Pushaw commented: ‘It’s disgusting how Jane Austen was trying to smear our military by linking them to those bath-houses. She was also grooming our youth by glamorizing homosexuality and making it look attractive to our kids. It’s horrific that generations of children have read this book foisted on them by elites.’
Pushaw went on: ‘It should have been obvious from the book’s title, blatantly using the word Pride. And Austen then had the gall to claim that anyone complaining about homosexuality is guilty of Prejudice.’
But there’s one book which includes rape, incest, prostitution, adultery, murder, and even genocide that will stay in Florida classrooms: The Bible. When asked about that, Governor DeSantis said: ‘Any of that stuff that’s done in the name of religion is OK with me.’