No one is defending porn for third graders. That doesn’t stop people from reframing the argument that way.

Jodi Picoult is an amazing author who writes thoughtful novels difficult social issues. In the books I’ve read, manages to make her thoughts known without outright damning people who disagree. I wish I had the talent she has in her pinky finger. Even the people who don’t like her work would have to agree that she doesn’t write erotica. She should not have her books banned from high school and municipal libraries.

According to some True American Patriots™ on Twitter, this makes me a pedophile who wants to serve up pornography to third graders.

And yet, there’s a book that has far worse stories than anything Jodi Picoult’s written. One of the first stories in this book is about a family of hermits–a father and two daughters (the mother died)–that lives far away from civilization. The two daughters fear they’ll never have a chance to raise children, so they get their father drunk and take turns raping him to make babies.

This book is available in most libraries. Elementary and pre-school children are taught content from this book on a regular basis. Somehow, this book is okay with the people who want Jodi Picoult’s work banned. They support content from this book being taught, even to pre-schoolers. For all his positioning as the pro-parent, pro-purity culture warrior, Ron DeSantis hasn’t said a word about this particular book.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m referring to the story of Lot’s daughters. The Jewish faith demands babies be made. After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, there were no men to marry, so they made children with their father.

While the story doesn’t cover the mechanics of the conception, the implications are there–and they’re disturbing. You can’t say the Bible paints God’s people with a blind eye to their faults.

Clearly, I’m not saying the Bible should be pulled from libraries, or that children should be shielded from its content. There’s a time and a place. And if children in higher grades want to read an adult Bible, complete with the story of Lot’s daughters’ incestuous rape, they should be able to.

They should also be able to read Toni Morrison, Jodi Picoult, The Handmaid’s Tale, and A Time to Kill. In the Twitter wars, I was called out for referencing The Handmaid’s Tale because there’s graphic sexual content. There’s also graphical sexual content in A Time to Kill. Both works include descriptions of rape.

When my daughter reached a certain age, we told her that if she was at a party, if she was drinking beer out of a bottle, keep her thumb over the top. If she set down a drink, consider it gone. If she wound up short of money because of it, we’d cover her. Because of rape.

High school students know that the world’s full of ugly things. They regularly practice what to do if a shooter enters their school. If my daughter also picked up healthy skepticism about what happens at parties, it’s not blowing up her world view. She knows there are predators.

The problem is, when you push back on the censorship, you suddenly support showing graphic sexual content to third graders. You become a groomer and pedophile because it’s easy shut people down with those charges and end arguments.

Meanwhile, folks like DeSantis and a raft of self-important culture warriors impose their standards from a minority viewpoint. Those standards go far beyond pornography and elementary school students.

For the record, I don’t support porn for kids. If you raised specific examples, I would agree with you about their inappropriateness. Although the accusations fly, no specific examples are provided.

I disagree with Margaret Atwood’s (author of The Handmaid’s Tale) politics. Jodi Picoult probably wouldn’t agree with mine. That’s what freedom means. People get to take positions I don’t agree with.

We should defend that freedom. When people use pornography as a cover to condemn a wide range of books that might or might not have sexual content, we should ask questions.

If you push back when people defend Picoult, Atwood, Morrison, or a freaking Michelangelo sculpture, you’re being served a bait-and-switch for political gain.

The question is, why are you okay with that?

DeSantis disavows blogger bill–for now

It might have unfair to associate Ron DeSantis with Florida State Senator Jason Brodeur’s bill requiring that bloggers register with the state if they cover the executive or legislative branches and get paid or will get paid.

From the time the bill caught media attention last week until yesterday, DeSantis didn’t comment. Yesterday, he distanced himself from the bill, saying, “That’s not anything that I’ve ever supported, I don’t support [it].” DeSantis then blasted the media for tying the bill to him.

On its face, his criticism has merit. He’s technically right when he says he doesn’t control every bill or amendment. But this is the governor who openly said he was punishing Disney for its opposition to his Don’t Say Gay law. He’s the guy who, in his book, bragged about how his ability to veto specific projects gives him “a source of leverage … to wield against the Legislature.”

It took DeSantis the better part of a week to announce his opposition to the blogger bill. Maybe he really believes it’s a constitutional overstep that’s incompatible with freedom. If so, he deserves some credit for that.

At his core, DeSantis is a calculating political animal, a shark in governor’s clothing. The blogger bill generated a firestorm of opposition from people who might otherwise be political allies. It hurt him at a time when former President Donald Trump is, God help us, putting distance between himself and DeSantis in many polls.

It’s fair to wonder whether DeSantis really opposes the registration of critical voices, or he’s making a practical political move. The Tampa Bay Times quotes him as saying after his initial win for governor, “My view was, I may have gotten 50% of the vote, but I earned 100% of the executive power and I’m going to use it to advance an agenda.”

DeSantis seems to follow the lead of other recent executives who view their state or country as theirs to run as they please–as someone who pronounces how things will be. A leader of the people, rather than their servant.

Such leaders often have short memories about previous stances when the chance comes to accumulate political power.

Time will tell how much he opposes this concept.

The prophet of vengeance

“I am your retribution,” Donald Trump said in his CPAC speech Saturday night.

As Trump has rightly pointed out, the level of danger in the world is uncomfortably high. Russia has designs not only on Ukraine, but potentially on the former Eastern Block. China has designs on Taiwan. North Korea is rattling its sabres. Iran may be inches from a nuclear capability.

Against that backdrop, Donald Trump has named the enemy, and it’s none of those governments. It’s not Putin or Xi. It’s a neighbor, a co-worker, or a loved one.

It anyone who politely opts out of political discussions because they’re sick of pronouncements of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s anyone who points out Trump wanted to shoot American citizens in the legs for protesting. It’s anyone against whom his followers have a grievance against, real or imagined. It’s whoever they want to target for not being true believers.

As with all good lies, there’s a shred of truth in Trump’s rant. There is a segment of American society that wants to silence anyone they disagree with, a group of people that’s proudly woke and treats anyone who disagrees as someone who needs to be silenced for the betterment of society. Those people exist, but they are far fewer in number than Trump makes out.

And they’re a group of people whose tactics have been co-opted and amplified by the right, with the power of government to enforce them.

If Donald Trump becomes president again, it will be time to choose. Do you choose Trump or your friends who disagree with him? Do you choose him or the people who don’t believe Tucker Carlson showed there was no such thing as the January 6 insurrection? Do you choose Trump or people close to you who see him as a danger?

Trump laid it out Saturday night. The enemy is within and it must be fought to the death.

“This is the final battle. They know it, I know it, You know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win, or we win and if they win, we no longer have a country.”

Those are his exact words.

If Trump is re-elected, he will use his Presidential power as an instrument of vengeance. He will deal retribution with the powers vested in him by the Constitution. He will crush the enemy with no remorse and without looking back.

And he demands you help him. He is a jealous and vengeful god for whom hesitation is disloyalty and disloyalty is the greatest sin.

His enemies are America’s enemies and he’ll command you to crush those enemies.

Even if you shared holiday meals with them.

RIP, Rays radio announcer Dave Wills

Tampa Bay Rays radio broadcaster Dave Wills died this morning at the age of 58. It was unexpected, as he called the end of yesterday’s Rays-Yankees spring training game.

Unlike other sports, baseball is played almost every day. It’s there almost any time you want it. For me, in the car, that meant Wills and his partner Andy Freed, among the best radio announcers in the game. He made the game personal and interesting, even if it was a yawner.

There’s a connection you have with baseball announcers you don’t necessarily have with those in other sports. John Madden, great as he was, was typically talking to Pat Summerall. Though Lightning fans love our local radio guy, Dave Mishkin, erupting like every goal is the first one he’s ever seen seems over the top.

Good baseball announcers are different. Vin Scully welcomed you to each game, inviting you to pull up a chair and wishing you a very good afternoon or evening. And Wills made you feel like you were watching the game with a friend.

When I read of his death this morning, it wasn’t like I’d lost a friend, but maybe someone at work you crossed paths with and were always glad you did.

Everything I’ve read indicates that Wills was a special guy, one everyone seems to like. A guy who goes out of his way to treat people well. They’re the ones who feel the real loss. But when someone’s death saddens people who don’t know them, that’s a life well-lived.

Trump is itching to use the power of the Presidency for retribution. And his base approves.

Maybe I’m overreacting.

Then again, the guy who said the words once asked about people protesting him, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

That guy is Donald Trump and in his speech at CPAC yesterday, as part of an apocalyptic message, he said, “In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

It’s tempting to skip right past that, to say it’s just more red meat or a base that views vegetarians as an existential threat. But this is the guy who wanted to maim people for the crime of protesting against him outside the White House. The protesters made him look bad. They were disloyal–the greatest sin possible in a Trump-centered world.

His entire speech was a roadmap of the people who wrong and betrayed him–and by extension, the people he seeks retribution for, from the “criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals, and dangerous refugees no other country wants” to the “freaks, neocons, globalists, open-border zealots, and fools” he considers RINOs (Republicans in name only).

Trump spent an hour and forty-five minutes on his speech, much if it an airing of grievances. He spoke of the people imprisoned for the January 6 insurrection, “sitting in a jail nearby, rotting away and being treated so unfairly, like nobody’s probably ever been treated in the country before – except maybe me.”

He also made it clear what he thinks the stakes are in 2024.

“This is the final battle, they know it. I know it, you know it, and everybody knows it, this is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.” Anyone who’s watched enough TV and movies knows what happens in the final battle. Everything is on the table. Every tactic has to be weighed against the cost of losing. Moral qualms can be suppressed because continued existence is only possible through victory.

These are not the words and actions of a man who intends to put up with a loyal opposition–or any opposition. Again and again, he’s shown that loyalty is the greatest virtue and that the road to morality requires the first step of loyalty to him.

These are the words of a man itching to have the means for retribution placed in his hands.

At a straw poll taken among the Trump-heavy attendees at CPAC, Trump beat DeSantis by 42 points. Although he’s weakened within the general electorate, he’s bided his time to let the memories of his last days in office fade. Among true believers, he’s been able to recast what happened there.

It’s very early, but he’s polling as the presumptive Republican nominee. And he’s within striking distance of Biden. If Biden chooses not to run and the Democrats replace him with someone more progressive, his road back to power becomes much less complicated.

It’s not just Trump, it’s the people who are with him–the ones who want him back in office so they can see retribution for those who dare threaten their freedom by thinking differently.

This week in the occupied state of Florida

Maybe it’s Donald Trump’s dismissal of him as a second-bench lightweight. Maybe it’s the polls that show him trailing the former president. Or maybe it’s just hunger power and intolerance of anyone who doesn’t kiss his ass.

Whatever the reason, it’s been an active week for god-emporer DeSantis as he cements his control of the occupied state of Florida.

Having purged the leadership of New College, a small liberal arts school in Sarasota, he turned his attention to Disney World, installing hand-picked culture warriors to oversee its tax district. Eliminating a corporation’s ability to act as its own government is a positive thing. Doing it because they opposed your legislative agenda, then saying you’ll make it hard on that corporation if they don’t do what you want is incompatible with freedom.

One of the newly enthroned overlords thinks birth control pill residue in water can make you gay and that homosexuality is evil. DeSantis’s definition of a free state includes state-installed governments that include people who think some of the residents are inherently evil based on which consenting adults they’re attracted to.

It’s a pattern in DeSantistan. One of his allies in the state legislature introduced a bill that would require you to register with the state if you blog about its political leaders and get paid, or might get paid. In a world where local media is dying away, these actions would limit citizen journalism, such as FITSNews, which drove the coverage of the Murdaugh murders in South Carolina. Because Murdaugh attorney Dick Harpootlian is a state senator, such a law in that state could’ve helped Murdaugh escape responsibility for his crimes, including and beyond the murder of his wife and son.

DeSantis’s legislative allies are advancing a bill that could act to ignore the New York Times v. Sullivan precedent that protects the rights of the news media to report adverse information about someone in the public eye. Currently, if you’re a public figure, you have to prove reporting harmed your reputation, that it was false, and that it was presented with malice. According to Bobby Block, Executive Director of the First Amendment Foundation, the legislation “throws it (the protections) all out and it leaves everyone vulnerable to punitive lawsuits.”

The legislation allows plaintiffs to sue media outlets for defamation and collect attorneys’ fees. It presumes comments made by anonymous sources are false in considering defamation suits, and reduces the threshold for public figures to be successful in suing for defamation. It would also compel journalists to reveal sources in court in defending defamation suits. Taken together, the contents of this bill would vastly increase the risk of vigorously covering a corrupt government, if one were to exist. It would also potentially make Florida a magnet state for defamation suits brought on a national scale.

But, wait–there’s more. DeSantis has also endorsed a Trump idea that would recategorize a vast swath of government employees as Schedule F–something that would strip them of civil service protections and effectively make them political appointees. In other words, if you say something the President doesn’t like, he can immediately fire you and replace you with someone who’ll say exactly what he wants.

His influence has reached as far down the political ladder as the Hillsborough County Commission. Michael Owen, one of the commissioners, wants parental controls on libraries and to force county libraries to drop their membership in the American Library Association. (To be fair, Emily Drabinski, the association’s incoming president identifies herself as Marxist.) In our house, we had parental controls–if we said no, that was that. We didn’t have the county do our job for us.

Controlling allowable books is the centerpiece of DeSantis’s culture war. State education officials are demanding lists of books being used and banning educational approaches they deem to be substandard. They’re also producing rules with vague definitions, such as what pornography is.

DeSantis has gone as far as targeting individual members of local school boards for defeat in upcoming elections. In a free state, you ought to be able to disagree with the governor without being targeted by him. Ask Disney how free this state is.

All of this has occurred within the past few days. DeSantis will not accept anything that doesn’t fit his vision and his plans to consolidate power.

For the record, I will never register with the state for the privilege to call its governor out on his antagonism to freedom.

PS — If you look up irony in the dictionary, you might find the picture at the top of this page.

Freedom’s just another word for not living in Florida

Not content with criminalizing pronouns and pictures of gay couples together on a teacher’s desk, the free state of Florida is considering legislation that would require any blogger who writes about the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, legislature, or cabinet officials and gets paid or might get paid.

As a result, henceforth, this blog will be known as Radio Free Florida, published from the occupied state of Florida. We used to be free. We were free under previous Republicans, like Jeb! Bush and now-Democrat Charlie Crist.

And if you’d like to throw me a buck or two so I get paid, or expect to get paid, that would be fantastic, too. So now I expect I might get paid. And I will never, ever register with the state to call DeSantis out for his Orwellian overreaches.

In a free state, you don’t register free expression.

Today, I am blogging about the God-Emperor Governor, members of the legislature, and the cabinet. At the moment, my faith prevents me from being totally honest about them. I expect to do so in the future.

My father and assorted other relatives have served this country to help keep it free. They didn’t do that so I can register for the right to criticize the elected representatives of this state–one of whom wants to run the country.

The United States isn’t built around making sure the government can keep tabs on me in case I don’t say something nice about them.

America stands for freedom. And freedom isn’t granted by a tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood.

I will never register with the state for the right to criticize this joke of a governor.

No, my faith is not like a penis

In the wake of He Gets Us and the Asbury Revival, there’s been a pushback against the public airing of faith. Open-minded people, typically progressive, are fine with dunderheads having their silly little superstition as long as they never have to hear about it.

Usually it starts with a pronouncement that Jesus would be more impressed if we took the time, energy, and money involved with whatever and used it to help the poor and elect more Democrats. Then it continues with references to their favorite Bible verse, Matthew 6:6, which says when you pray, go to your room and shut the door. Then comes the climax:

The bottom line is that faith is okay if it is never mentioned publicly or referenced by the people who exercise it.

I like to run (when my legs allow it). I like Chicago pizza. I also try to be a faithful Christian in how I approach God and others. It’s part of who I am. It helps guide my decision making and has helped me be less of an asshole. (I know, I know, you can manage to be less of an asshole without the stupid crutch. Whatever reduces the latent asshole quotient shouldn’t be quibbled with.)

I don’t go out of my way to bring it up, but when it seems appropriate, I’ll mention it.

For me, it comes up when someone who claims to speak for Team Jesus perverts what I believe the message to be. It can also come up when someone on the other team does something silly, like proclaiming the people who drove to Asbury were horrible people for not donating the money they spent on a couple tanks of gas to the homeless.

Or comparing content like this blog post to a picture of my genitalia sent to their cell phone.

U2 has a song called 40, based on Psalm 40. They liberally sprinkle Christian references in their lyrics. Movies from Cool Hand Luke to Superman have subtle Jesus references. Are those the same as penis pictures sent unsolicited to your phone?

When you lead with Matthew 6:6, I refer to 1 Peter 3:16 which says to be ready to talk about my hope, but to do so with gentleness and respect. I write a lot about faith here and always keep that in mind when I wander into the divine.

You may not care for this post or others like it. That’s your right. But comparing this post to sexual assault is ridiculous and minimizes the experience of people who’ve actually experienced sexual assault.

For the record, God gives us free choice. If he respects that choice, so should I. But that doesn’t mean I should never, ever mention my choice. It doesn’t mean Matthew 6:6 is the pinnacle of Jesus’s teachings.

I’m pretty vocal when Christians use their faith as a bludgeon. To expect my faith to never, ever be mentioned–just in case someone might possibly be offended by that mention–is silly.

And you have the right to insist this post is like a picture of my unmentionables, as is your right.

In the free state of Florida you might get cited for (gasp) using the wrong pronoun

In his ongoing effort to be the anti-Newsom in the lead-up to the 2024 Presidential election, Ron DeSantis has started referring to the “Free State of Florida.” As he remakes the state in his image, freedom’s just another word for thinking the way the state wants you to think.

The state legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit referencing yourself or someone else by a pronoun other than the one they were born with in public education. In the free state of Florida, you might get cited for using the wrong pronoun.

The bill also prohibits sanctions against someone for using the wrong pronoun to refer to someone else, something far beyond that common-sense limit. Sam Smith is a pop singer who asked people to use they/them pronouns years ago. The first time I discussed it with someone, I used him probably half a dozen times. It takes time to unlearn something.

It’s awkward as hell to write the they pronoun sometimes, but if that’s the worst thing that happens to me, it’s been a good week. It doesn’t hurt me to refer to Sam Smith using the pronoun they want. (Full disclosure: I just wrote he out of habit, then changed it. In a free society, I shouldn’t be sanctioned for that. Neither should I be sanctioned for referring to Sam Smith as they.)

If this bill passes the state legislature, DeSantis is likely to sign it. Forcing someone to think the way you want them to think–and criminalizing expression you oppose–isn’t freedom. Ask people who grew up in East Germany.

In a world that has problems with crime, mental health, violence, extreme weather, the potential for global thermonuclear war, and a plethora of other plagues, it’s hard to imagine why we’re going to war over something this trivial.

And yet here we are, barreling dead long toward some Orwellian redefinition of freedom.