Ron DeSantis has turned Florida into a nightmare of Christian fascist wackos stumbling over one another to see who can ban books faster. Christian, The Hugging Lion, a story of a lion raised by two men in a London apartment who remembers them years later, has been banned because someone in Florida thought the men might be gay.
The story has nothing to do with gender identity; This is simply a book. Florida bans books.
Nothing in the book indicates the two men are in a same-sex relationship — but activists speculated that they might be, which was enough for a complaint about the book.
As the report notes, "Christian, the Hugging Lion" was written by the same authors who wrote "And Tango Makes Three," a book about a pair of male penguins who raise a family. That book is also restricted in some Florida schools, and the authors have filed a federal lawsuit against Florida and a county school board.
This is only the latest in a series of bans and restrictions on content in schools being pushed in Florida. Last month, state laws prompted a school system in Hillsborough County to heavily redact the works of William Shakespeare, teaching only excerpts of his plays.
Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, has become a battleground for cultural fights over what can be taught in schools. The Parental Rights in Education Act, the same law that spawned these controversies, is also known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, as it also prohibits "classroom instruction" on sexual orientation and gender identity for grades K-3, or for any other grade "in a manner that is not age appropriate."
