That Marjorie Taylor Greene has replaced Matt Gaetz with George Santos as her new congressional bosom buddy is a terrifying thought. But the House of Representatives’ most divisive BFFs are now taking their unhinged alliance one step further by appointing themselves the arbiters of good taste and co-sponsoring a bill that would keep “sexually explicit” books out of school libraries.
According to Mediaite, Greene and Santos are co-sponsoring what is known as H.R. 863, a bill that Florida Man and newly appointed GOP congressman Cory Mills filed last week, which caught the attention — and drew ire — from LGBTQ Nation. While the entirety of the proposed bill’s text is not yet public record, Mediaite learned that its official purpose is to “amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing sexually explicit material to a school or an educational agency, to prohibit Federal funds from being provided to a school that obtains or an educational agency that distributes sexually explicit material, and for other purposes.”
Of course, this begs the question: What would be considered “sexually explicit material,” and exactly who (GULP!) would be making that determination? The GOP is currently engaged in an all-out war about “wokeness,” especially in Florida, where — based on the images circulating of empty bookshelves in school libraries — Ron DeSantis, a.k.a. Meatball Ron, seems to want to ban reading altogether. While the Florida governor and likely 2024 presidential candidate has attempted to downplay the state’s book review process and claim it’s the mainstream media who are turning it into a “story” at all, officials in Florida’s Duval County told ABC News that there are currently nearly 2 million titles under review.
“As required by state law, we are in the process of having certified media specialists review all classroom library books,” Tracy Pierce, chief of marketing and public relations at Duval County Public Schools, told ABC News. “There are approximately 1.6 million titles in our classroom and media center libraries that need to be reviewed by a certified media specialist.”
The bill being co-sponsored by Santos and Greene — who doesn’t even seem to know that The Chronicles of Narnia is a book series — would presumably take this war on reading to the national level.
(Via Mediaite)