What You Won't Read About Banned Books in the Tampa Bay Times
Plus, rap fan punched out and package thieves in Hyde Park North.
The Tampa Bay Times often writes disapprovingly about efforts to remove books from the shelves of public libraries and schools. Sometimes, the paper is right to be offended. At other times, the case is far less clearcut.
CURRENTS
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TOP NEWS
Merger of Tampa Bay's transportation planning agencies is feasible but needs financial support, report says. Tampa Bay Business Journal $
Sinkhole opens up beneath wastewater treatment pond at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. Creative Loafing
'Alarming' threats to Hillsborough tax collector lead to man's arrest. Patch
Teachers say they can't live and work in Florida anymore. WUSF
Court sides with homeowner on law restricting ability to sue insurance companies. WMNF
Federal agencies to offer free COVID tests to schools; will Florida go for it?. Florida Phoenix
More Tampa Bay homes sell at a loss. Axios
Catalytic converter thefts exhaust Tampa Bay. Axios
Video shows wanted felon striking sheriff's truck in Brandon: Sheriff. Patch
EPA plan would eliminate lead pipes within 10 years. ABC Action News
BRIEFS
CRIME
Double Homicide Arrest: A U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force in Maryland has a suspect, Jean Pierre Ojeda Salazar, 25, in custody for a double homicide in Tampa on Sunday. The suspect has been charged with murder in the first degree with a weapon, murder in the second degree with a weapon, and aggravate assault with a deadly weapon. The charges stem from two stabbings in 4000 block of Riveredge Drive involving a 14-year-old Hispanic female and a 35-year-old Hispanic female. According to detectives, Salazar fatally injured both victims following a verbal altercation with the adult victim. Police said Salazar immediately left the residence in a white sedan that he later abandoned. Detectives determined that Salazar fled to a residence in Maryland where he was later taken into custody. Salazar was being held at Maryland's Montgomery County Correctional Facility
and awaiting transport.
Rap Fan Punched: A fan of rapper Nardo Wick was punched apparently by someone affiliated with the performer about 1:17 a.m. on Monday at Club Skye, 1509 E. Eighth Ave., after a concert. Police said the victim, identified by his family as George Obregon Jr., attempted to approach the performer for a photo and was attacked. Obregon was transported to a hospital where he is in critical but stable condition. Detectives are aware of videos circulating on social media and are interested in speaking to anyone who witnessed the incident or may have information to assist in identifying the suspects. Anyone with information is asked to call Tampa police at 813-231-6130 or submit an anonymous tip by contacting Crime Stoppers at 800-873-TIPS (8477) or via TIP411.
Package Thieves: Police are looking for two suspects who allegedly stole several packages from the 2500 block of Watrous Avenue near Historic Hyde Park North about 11:42 p.m. on Nov. 2. To minimize the risk of porch pirates, residents can use a porch lock box, track packages and have someone pick up delivered package(s), require a signature upon delivery, have packages delivered to secure locations, and give recipients a heads-up and ask if they have a delivery preference. Detectives are seeking assistance in identifying the suspects involved. To view the surveillance video:
Anyone with information that could assist detectives with their investigation
is asked to call Tampa Police at 813-231-6130 or submit an anonymous tip by
contacting Crime Stoppers at 800-873-TIPS (8477) or via TIP411.
NEWS
Cold Weather Shelters: Hillsborough County’s cold weather shelters program was activated Tuesday night for the homeless and those who live in homes without adequate heat who are unable to find other accommodations. The National Weather Service expected local temperatures to dip to or below 40 degrees with wind chill in Hillsborough County on Tuesday night. Organizations interested in hosting a cold weather shelter this season can contact Julie Watkinson, Community Relations Coordinator, at WatkinsonJ@HCFLGov.net for more information
Airport Record: Tampa International Airport experienced record numbers over the busy Thanksgiving period, seeing a 6 percent increase in passengers over the same period last year and handling 840,000 passengers. From Thursday, Nov. 16, through Sunday, Nov. 26, the Airport handled 5,844 flights — an 18 percent increase over last year’s Thanksgiving period — and served 840,000 passengers. The Airport had its second-busiest day in history on Sunday, Nov. 26, as 89,018 passengers traveled through TPA. The busiest was on March 19, 2023, the peak of spring break, when 90,320 passengers traveled through the Airport.
Lane Closure: The westbound lanes of E. Polk Street from N. Franklin Street to N. Marion Street will be closed Friday and Saturday for CSX maintenance.
LEISURE
Filmmaker Honored: Lynn Marvin Dingfielder, a local film documentarian who recently released La Gaceta: 100 Years and Three Generations Behind America’s Only Trilingual Newspaper, received a commendation on Nov. 1 from the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners. A Chicago native, Dingfelder worked as a reporter, writer, anchor, and producer at numerous television news stations across the country before moving to Tampa to become a documentarian and business owner of Creative on Main Street. Since its inception, Creative on Main Street has produced a dozen documentaries that focus on Hillsborough County's multifaceted history.
GIFF Submissions Sought: The Gasparilla International Film Festival, or GIFF, Tampa Bay's largest celebration of independent film held annually in Tampa, is seeking filmmaker submissions. The regional film festival is part of Gasparilla Arts Month (Music, Art, Film) in March. The festival runs March 21-24, will show films of all types/genres, including features, documentaries, shorts, music videos, family-friendly films, international films and more. The regular deadline is Dec. 15.
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REPORTER
Anatomy of a Book Ban
By Judith M. Gallman
We live in the epicenter of contemporary booking banning. In September, PEN America reported that more than 40 percent of all the books pulled from American library and public school shelves were removed in the Sunshine State.
PEN America’s report came on the heels of Pinellas County schools pulling five books from library shelves. Meanwhile, in Hillsborough County, a single book — This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson — was removed from a middle school library shelf.
In the Tampa Bay Times, columnist Stephanie Hayes asked how this could happen: “Ultra-conservative activists with a penchant for THEE-A-TRAY are putting on Razzie-worthy performances at school boards around Florida, reading graphic passages. These speakers have literally been instructed to stand up and say “potty” words. It’s worth noting the groups do excavate plenty of explicit texts, but these passages are almost always delivered without framing for context, intent, literary merit or faith in educators to screen for age and ability. When the words stand alone, they have outsized power to unfairly shock, disgust and paint schools as hotbeds of moral corruption.”
Hayes is right about the process. But most media depictions of the decision to remove a book from school shelves also lack context — including those in the Times.
What's the one thing most often missing from coverage of book banning? The book itself.
A look at the decision to remove This Book Is Gay from the shelves of Pierce Middle School in West Tampa reveals the lack of maturity in much discussion of what is typically called “book banning.”
Sexuality, sexual violence, or gender identity lie at the heart of many contemporary battles over the books in our schools. Works that frankly acknowledge LGBT identity seem to attract special scrutiny.
Schools should fight hard for the right to present reasonable material regarding gender and sexual identity to their students. Yet there’s little agreement about what constitutes reasonable.
Julie Gebhards, the Lithia mom who first complained about This Book is Gay, considers it to be pedophilia-promoting pornography wholly inappropriate for all school libraries. She has subsequently challenged its allowance at Armwood High School in Sefner. She also has complained about other books, including The Bluest Eye by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison and Blankets, a graphic novel by Craig Thompson.
Gebhards argued that This Book Is Gay encourages kids to engage in sexual behavior, contains unfounded attacks on religion, inappropriately instructs readers in how to use the gay hook-up app Grindr, and includes one account of an adult coming on to an under-aged teen. She believes children’s brains aren’t developed enough to make mature decisions regarding sex and gender.
She objects to calling the book’s removal a “ban,” which she says implies that the book has been removed from society. Gebhards just believes such works should not be in schools because that type of content should be left up to parents to disseminate.
“When a school puts this in a library, that’s a restriction of my ability to protect my child,” she said in an interview. “I think it’s a parent’s job to determine how they want to talk to their kids about it. It’s not how I would discuss it with them. It is a far more serious subject than it is presented as. That is the parent’s job how and when. … It’s just not the school’s job to put that in front of minors.”
On the other hand, Dr. Dani Rosenkrantz of the Tampa-based practice Brave Space Psychology, cautions that kids often don’t turn to their parents for answers.
Rosenkrantz said LGBT youth need to feel seen and supported. Children are very sensitive to shame at a young age, she noted, and how we talk about things — as well as what we don’t talk about — can have serious impacts. Rosenkrantz, who said she has not read This Book is Gay, believes children deserve accurate information about sexuality and gender, while adding that there’s no one-size-fits-all prescription for kids of any age.
Dawson, author of the book that Rolling Stone has described as the ninth most-banned book in America, appears to believe that most anything goes.
This Book Is Gay is a best-selling young adult how-to manual for kids who may be curious and questioning about their sexuality and gender. Dawson, a British transgender woman, adopts a candid, nudge-nudge tone that seeks to demystify sexuality and gender while assuring questioning kids it’s all right to embrace their authentic self, whomever that might turn out to be. It’s deemed by the publisher to be appropriate for kids in grades 8-12.
There are many positives about the book, which its author touts as an “instruction book for once you’ve come out.” Dawson offers good advice about bullying and hammers home the message that just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you're not normal. She lays blame on society’s transphobic and homophobic proclivities and urges her readers to “be out and proud” and “always be true to yourself.
Citing her own informal survey of “hundreds of LGBTQ+ people,” Dawson says that 57 percent of them say they questioned their sexuality between the ages of 11 to 15. “We have to talk about sexuality in an nonhysterical way,” she wrote. The author makes the point that kids typically learn nothing in sex-ed classes about non-heterosexual sex.
But Dawson’s book also is quite racy and scatalogical at times, in a provocative manner that might shock even some parents who are completely accepting of their LGBT children. Dawson unapologetically barrels headfirst into a wide range of topics, including a glossary of terms at the end of the book. Consider the following passages:
“Oral sex is popping another dude’s peen in your mouth, or, indeed, popping yours in his. There is only one hard and fast rule when it comes to blow jobs — watch the teeth. Lips and tongue, yes; teeth, no.”
“A good handie is all about the wrist action. Rub the head of his cock back and forth with your hand. Try different speeds and pressures until he responds positively.”
“As with hand jobs and breakfast eggs, all men like their blow jobs served in different ways. The term ‘blow job’ is massively misleading, as you won’t actually be blowing on his penis — it’s more about sucking (although I stress you’re not trying to suck his kidneys out through his urethra). It’s more about sliding your mouth up and down the shaft of his cock. Letting a guy come in your mouth is a safe sex no-no. Get away from the volcano before it erupts.”
“How do you know if you’re a top or bottom? It’s easy. If the thought of having a big hard thing poked up your tush is arousing, you are probably a bottom. See? Easy.”
Dawson’s choice of language warrants consideration. “SEXYTHOUGHTS” and “SEXYFUNTIME” are suitable euphemisms for sexual thoughts and sexual behavior, and Dawson’s graphic of funny things that don’t make you gay — ranging from dolls, musical theater, and toilet seats to sharing mugs, gay characters in books and films, and an airborne monkey virus — are pretty lighthearted. But the language also includes “cocks,” “butt sex,” “arse,” “ghost weiners,” “weenies and va-jay-jay,” not to mention sexual terms including “rimming,” “scat,” and “water sports/golden showers.”
This Book Is Gay also makes a variety of loosely or unsourced assertions — for instance, claiming that gay men have longer, thicker penises. If research truly has shown this, that would be yet more evidence that being gay has a biological basis and is not the liberal “lifestyle choice” that some religious conservatives would have us believe.
Handled in an adult fashion, such information could be helpful for minors considering their own sexuality. Yet in This Book Is Gay, such matters are often played for laughs.
When a parent challenges a book in Hillsborough County schools, the first step is sharing the concern with the school’s library specialist. If further review is requested, the media specialist asks the complainant to submit a form attesting that they have read or viewed the material in its entirety and articulating their concerns, citing specific passages or pages.
At that point, the school's Educational Media Materials Committee convenes to review the submitted form, read the work in question, consult professional reviews, weigh merits vs. alleged faults, align with selection criteria, and reach a decision. The decision of that committee applies only to a single school.
Gebhards cited the passages quoted above among her 14 specific objections to This Book is Gay. She viewed the purpose of book as to instruct and normalize all types of sexual behavior including pedophilia, and to promote and pressure kids into adopting an LGBT lifestyle.
Her challenge got nowhere until a second mom, Stephanie Ascroft of Tampa, asked for reconsideration of the decision to allow the Pierce Middle School library book to stay.
Ascroft’s beef was with Chapter 9 of the book, and its how-to instructions on how to use the hook-up app Grindr. She recommended “other ‘guidebooks’ for the LGBT community that don’t contain ‘how to’ have sex, as seen in Chapter 9, or reference how you can find someone with whom to have sex.” She said the book is not age-appropriate outside a setting such as a sex-ed class.
The county school board eventually sided with the mothers.
“The book titled This Book Is Gay went through our process and was removed from Pierce Middle School and is not allowed in any middle school,” wrote Tanya Arja, chief of communications for Hillsborough County Public Schools. “As part of the process, the individual that challenged the book appealed the decision by the committee at the school and then appealed the decision made by the district committee. So, it was then brought to a school board meeting. The superintendent recommended removing the book from middle schools and then the board voted to remove the book from all middle schools in the district.”
Requests to interview the school board president and school board members were not acknowledged.
In cases in which books are removed from schools or libraries, the media often turns the authors into victims. Here’s what Publishers Weekly wrote about Dawson and This Book Is Gay:
“Dawson wrote the book to give hope to those who found their journey rife with confusion instead of wonder and hope, and This Book Is Gay found its audience, positively affected readers’ lives, and became a bestseller along the way. But Dawson’s book has become the target, like so many books as of late, of book banning and other censorship efforts.”
What’s typically absent from such accounts — even in publishing journals such as Publishers Weekly — are actual excerpts from the work in question. This Book Is Gay and The Bluest Eye are very different works, but media coverage seldom explains the differences.
Such failures render discussions about these matters hollow and binary, typically turning even open-minded parents into close-minded censors. The truth is always more nuanced.
Consider, for instance, Tampa Bay Times coverage of Hillsborough County’s decision. The reporter provided scant description of This Book Is Gay aside from that found in its opening paragraph:
“This Book Is Gay, a nonfiction book that offers guidance to LGBTQ+ youth, will no longer be available at any Hillsborough County middle school,” the Times reported. “With a 4-3 vote … the school board decided to ban the title as inappropriate for children as young as 11. The vote aligned with the recommendation of [then-]Superintendent Addison Davis.”
Perhaps the Times itself was too squeamish to mention any of the book’s offending terms, issues, or passages.
Editor’s note: The article has been updated to reflect the proper spelling of Julie Gebhard’s name. The author of Blankets is Craig Thompson.
WHAT HE SAID
GET INVOLVED
Civic meetings of note during the coming week.
Monday: The Technical Advisory Committee of the Hillsborough Transportation Planning Organization will meet in special session to hear a presentation from Ian Lockwood, a nationally recognized leader in sustainable transportation policy and urban design, on “Roles & Designs of Arterial Streets in Hillsborough County.” Dec. 4, 1:30 p.m. Plan Hillsborough Committee Room, 18th Floor, County Center, 601 E. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa.
Wednesday: The Tampa Bay Habitat Restoration Consortium gathers to discuss restoration progress results, habitat restoration report card, a living shoreline site suitability decision support tool, and funding opportunities. The HRC is open to everyone working in the restoration field, from on-the-ground practitioners to project managers and research scientists. The agenda and other materials as they become available can be found on the Tampa Bay Estuary Program website. Dec. 6, 12:30-2:30 p.m., St. Petersburg College STEM Center.
Thursday and Friday: The Acquisition and Restoration Council of the Department of Environment Protection meets Thursday and Friday to review land management plans, develop the 2024 Florida Forever priority list, and consider Florida Forever project proposals and other proposed uses of state-owned conservation lands. The public are invited to participate in-person or online and will have the opportunity to provide public comment on the agenda items. If joining virtually, register for the GoToWebinars on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the webinar. In-person attendees do not need to register. Find the agenda and other meeting materials here. Dec. 7, 1 p.m.; Dec. 8, 9 a.m. Marjory Stoneman Douglas Building, Room 137, 3900 Commonwealth Blvd., Tallahassee.
OTHER NEWS
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BAY AREA
Tampa ranked among the top five college cities in America. Tampa Bay Business Journal $
Tampa senior living firm sues its bank, alleging it improperly seeks to dump loan. Business Observer $
A Pasco County distillery is making the Rolling Stones' new rum. WUSF
A USF rowing team will race across the Atlantic in the 'World's Toughest Row' challenge. WUSF
Steinbrenner swimmer brings home medals. The Laker/Lutz News
FLORIDA
Judge backs increased license fees for Florida medical marijuana operators. Creative Loafing
Florida lawmakers could give $40 million to survivors of infamous Dozier school for boys. Creative Loafing
Florida settles with a hotel over ‘Drag Queen Christmas’. WMNF
Bill in Florida would allow people to kill bears on their property without permits. WMNF
A proposal in the Florida Legislature would prevent reparations to descendants of slaves. WMNF
Abortion-rights advocates narrow focus of petition drive for Florida constitutional amendment. Florida Phoenix
More states are banning plastic bags. Florida is not among them. Florida Phoenix
Florida’s semiconductor industry gets $28 million funding boost The Capitolist
‘Florida man’ becomes ‘Georgia man’ | US Census shows surge in migration north. Fox 13 News
Bill proposes state recognition for three Native American tribes. WUSF
Florida grand jury calls for new tax to curb illegal immigration. Politico
Florida bill would ban high school athletes convicted of felonies. The Center Square
More policies shift from Citizens to private insurers. Tampa Bay Business Journal $
POLITICS
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis takes on California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 90-minute televised debate. Spectrum Bay News 9
Nikki Fried, Florida Dems helped Gavin Newsom prep for Ron DeSantis debate. Florida Politics
Divisions leave Florida’s House Republicans powerless. Politico
Poll finds Rick Scott, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell both underwater. Florida Politics
Weed the people: Two-thirds of Florida voters back recreational marijuana amendment, poll shows. Florida Politics
LEISURE
St. Pete mural legend Bask gets a wild gallery show at University of Tampa. ABC Action News
Single-game tickets for Rays home games to go on sale next week: What you need to know. 10 Tampa Bay
New Taylor Swift course to debut at University of Florida in 2024. Fox 13 News
ABOUT US
Editors: Judith M. Gallman and Stephen Buel
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