Freedom Readers, a book club for teens focused on banned and challenged books, emerged at the Flagler County Public Library in response to the book-banning controversies at the Flagler school board last fall. The club is one of several initiatives countering “what feels like a lot of repression,” in the words of Youth Services Librarian Gemma Rose.
First Amendment
1st a Law Gagging Talk of Gender. Now a Gag Order on Lawsuit Information. Plaintiffs Complain.
Plaintiffs challenging a Florida law restricting instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in schools are asking a judge to reverse an order stalling their ability to gather information in the case, arguing that the law is being used throughout the state to “censor any positive or supportive reference to LGBT people.”
Can A ‘Christian’ Wedding Website Designer Deny Service to Same-Sex Couples?
Lorie Smith designs websites. She intends to begin designing wedding websites and is unwilling to create them for same-sex couples, saying it would go against her Christian beliefs. Under Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act, though, it is discriminatory and illegal to refuse services to someone based on “disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry.”
Federal Judge Clears UCF Prof Robert Cassanello to Sue Over DeSantis’s ‘Stop Woke Act’
Cassanello, a history professor at UCF, and other plaintiffs, including public-school teachers and a student, filed the lawsuit in April after DeSantis signed the law (HB 7), arguing that it violated First Amendment rights and was unconstitutionally vague.
In 4th Legal Challenge Against DeSantis’s ‘Stop Woke Act,’ USF Professor and Student File Suit
In a 91-page complaint, lawyers for USF associate professor of history Adriana Novoa, student Samuel Rechek and the First Amendment Forum at University of South Florida raised a series of arguments that the law violates speech rights.
Who Will Rescue Our Tender Youth from Deviant Professors and their Noisome Notions?
Give it up, wokester profs: Ron DeSantis will no longer tolerate your anti-American spin on our history, your critical race theorizing, your LGBTQ weirdo agenda, and your communist indoctrination of our kids in Florida’s great state universities.
What in Jesus’s Name? Saving the Savior from Christian Nationalism.
In their zeal to stoke the fires of a culture war, conservatives have drafted Jesus into their army, with some proudly espousing Christian nationalism, which combines two character traits: religious zealotry and fascism. Meanwhile charlatan theologians give the politicians religious cover enough so that they can be assured that Jesus would vote Republican.
Federal Judge Urged to Halt Law Muzzling Instruction on Gender and Sexual Orientation
The 26-page motion contends that the law, passed this year by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, “was enacted with the purpose to discriminate and has the effect of discriminating against LGBTQ+ students and those with LGBTQ+ family members.”
Federal Judge Blocks Parts of DeSantis Anti-‘Woke’ Law Muzzling Race-Sensitivity Training at Work
The employment-related part of the law lists eight race-related concepts and says that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.”
School Board’s Jill Woolbright Says She’s in ‘Satanic Warfare’ Against ‘Evil Spirits’ at School District
Flagler County School Board incumbent Jill Woolbright, who is in a non-partisan race against Sally Hunt to be decided in the Aug. 23 election, says God placed her on the school board, that she is involved in “satanic warfare,” and that, in a reference to others on the school board and at the district office, she has “felt the evil spirits around me.”