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Far-right fascist anti-LGBTQ activist group Moms for Liberty has accused Florida librarians of distributing pornography to minors, a federal crime, for allowing a 17-year-old to check out a Young Adult novel.
Two Florida-based members of the group, Tom Gurski and Jennifer Tapley, called police on several librarians for allowing children to check out Jennifer Armentrout's Storm and Fury, a fantasy novel for kids aged 14 and over that includes one scene of kissing that nearly leads to sex.
Body-cam footage obtained by Popular.Info's Judd Legum shows Gurski and Tapley at a sheriff's office in Santa Rosa County, Florida, reporting the librarians to law enforcement while comparing the book to Playboy magazine and claiming it's pornographic.
Members of Moms for Liberty in Florida report Librarians to Policeyoutu.be
In the video, Tapley told an officer:
"The governor [Ron DeSantis] says this is child pornography. It’s a serious crime."
“It’s just as serious as if I handed a Playboy to [my child] right now, right here, in front of you. It’s just as serious, according to the law.”
Florida law states that books containing sexual content should be banned if such content is “harmful to minors” and “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors.”
Much like the state's infamous so-called "Don't Say Gay" law, however, the statute does not define what any of those terms mean, leaving the law open to interpretation and subject to the whims of those who choose to leverage it.
Such as, for example, two far-right Evangelical Christian activists who decided that teens making out in a book is pornographic and the librarians who checked the book out to minors should be charged with a federal crime tantamount to child abuse.
In the state of Florida, violations of the law are also a felony, punishable with a $5000 fine and up to five years in prison.
Meanwhile, the book itself has been endorsed by the state's own Florida Association of Media in Education on its "Teen Reads" list and is sold not in adult bookstores but in your local Barnes & Noble.
The author herself perhaps put it best. Armentrout told Popular.Info's Judd Legum:
“[I am surprised we are] living in an era where, apparently, some adults find it appropriate to contact the police over a fictional book involving gargoyles.”
On social media, people found this story absurd and disturbing.
@JuddLegum @Moms4Liberty A lot of this nonsense could be nipped in the bud by a few well placed lawsuits. You are accusing someone of a crime when you say they are distributing porn. That is actionable slander. Sue these clowns...and when their houses are at stake they might be a little more careful.— (@)
Speaking to Legum, Tapley claimed that any book with a sex scene of any kind is "pornographic." Which is absurd on its face, but doubly so since Storm and Fury's scene contains no actual sex.
But Florida's law probably empower groups like Moms for Liberty to interpret the very meaning of words, too. So, you heard it here first: Kissing is now sex, according to fascists trying to have your local librarian imprisoned.
Anyway, Tapley did concede that sex is okay in books that are "extreme classics," whatever that means. How reasonable of her.
The case has since been closed by the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office.