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Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet cancelled by DeSantis’s ‘don’t say gay’ law
Florida school district cites 'pre-marital sex' as reason to ban students studying play
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A Florida school district is censoring William Shakespeare to conform with governor Ron DeSantis’s controversial “don’t say gay” law.
Students will only be allowed to read excerpts of the Bard’s work that avoid racy or sexual references, rather than whole plays, at Hillsborough County’s public high schools.
The district, which covers the city of Tampa, said it was refining its curriculum to align with new laws after Florida’s governor and the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a sweeping set of restrictions on classroom discussion.
The edict on Shakespeare follows the Parental Rights in Education Act, commonly referred to by critics as the “don’t say gay” law.
It was signed into law last year by Mr DeSantis, 44, as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
The law, which was further expanded this year, clamps down on discussion around sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms.
It also limits classroom materials that “contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct”.
Hillsborough County has determined that applies to time-honoured classics including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth.
‘Rest of the world laughing at us’
Hillsborough County has determined the law applies to plays including Romeo and Juliet, whose protagonists, it is implied, engaged in pre-marital sex.
“There’s some raunchiness in Shakespeare,” Joseph Cool, a literacy teacher at Gaither High School, told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper. “Because that’s what sold tickets during his time.”
He added: “I think the rest of the nation – no, the world – is laughing at us. Taking Shakespeare in its entirety out because the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is somehow exploiting minors is just absurd.”
However, there appears to be some confusion over how to interpret the laws.
Just this week Manny Diaz, Florida’s education commissioner, put Romeo and Juliet on a list of books he recommended students read in August to “spark a love for literacy”.
In Lake County, outside Orlando, the school district reversed a decision, made in response to the law, to restrict access to a popular children’s book about a male penguin couple hatching a chick.
And Tango Makes Three recounts the true story of two male penguins who were devoted to each other at the Central Park Zoo in New York.
The “don’t say gay” law has been at the heart of a high-profile battle between Disney and Mr DeSantis, who has been at the forefront of efforts to bring America’s culture wars into its classrooms.