Bodacious Bookstore & Café staff, an independent bookstore in Pensacola, Florida, say that when they were eliminated by the LGBTQ titles from the shelves, some refused, while others resigned in protest or silently hidden the strange books to protect them.
“I started working in Bodacious because I love books and I am surrounded by stories and knowledge,” said a former employee, who asked to remain anonymous because he fears reprisals from the owners of the bookstore. She said she began to cry when Beth O’Connor, the interim manager of the bookstore, ordered her to eliminate the LGBTQ books. When she refused, said the former employee, O’Conner sent her home and said she reassess if she wanted to work in the store.
“It was a heartbreaking to be eliminated, especially starting with LGBTQ+titles,” said the former employee.
O’Connor did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
The censorship of the book has reached the historical maximums in recent years, with titles focused on LGBTQ issues and strange characters among the most prohibited and challenged in public schools and libraries. Independent libraries have been reliable in the midst of the growing conservative impulse, with many proudly with sections of “prohibited books”, but in Florida’s squaming county, possibly the zero zone for the battle of censorship of the country’s book, even a beloved independent bookstore is not immune.
Bodious Bookstore & Café is located in Pensolala, the largest city in Escambia, the westernmost county of Florida, which is located on the Alabama border. The county, which arrived at the headlines last year after his school district withdrew 1,600 book titles from the shelves, is also in the center of two federal demands in the censorship of books.
The first lawsuit, presented in May 2023 by the non -profit organization Pen America, Penguin Random House and a group of authors and parents, argues that the initial elimination of the school district of the sprain county of more than 150 books, many of them addressing issues related to problems or race LGBTQ, violates the rights of the first amendment of the students. The suit is ongoing. The second demand, also presented in 2023, challenges the extraction of the school book of the Children’s Book “and tango three”, on two male penguins that raise a girl. In September, the School District in that lawsuit agreed to return three dozen books related to the LGBTQ breed and community to the shelves as part of a conciliation agreement.
Now, many of the same stories are under scrutiny in Bodacious Bookstore & Café, owned by the businessman and philanthropist Quint Studer and his wife, Mary “Rishy” Studer.
According to a current and three former employees, management began reviewing all stores in stores after receiving a customer complaint against blasphemies on a greeting card. They said that what began as a purge of supposedly profane materials, including greeting cards, stickers and book titles with bad words, quickly intensified in the quiet elimination of more than 60 books in the store.
Approximately half of the books that were eliminated, the current and previous employees said, presented stories or authors Queer, including memories of celebrities such as “All in” by Billie Jean King and “Pageboy” of Elliot Page, as well as novels for young adults such as the series “Heartstopper” by Alice Oseman by Casey Mcquiston. Others included sexual education books, popular romances for young adults who do not present romance among the main characters LGBTQ, such as “The Summer I Gurnty Pretty” by Jenny Han and even books on the history of the prohibition of books.
The president of Quint Studer and Studer Entertainment & Retail, Jonathan Griffith, rejected an interview. On Monday, Travis Peterson, a student spokesman, said in a statement on behalf of the bookstore that eliminated greeting cards that presented blasphemies because they were “inconsistent with the values of our brand.”
“We also begin an exhaustive review of our inventory to ensure that books with explicit or graphic sexual content were not easily accessible to young children,” said the statement, adding that the review is ongoing.
The statement continued: “At no time were books eliminated due to LGBTQ+ (or any other) subject subject, authorship or gender. Any statement on the contrary is not true, especially if the former employees who are no longer involved with our operations are made. We believe that it means that it does not show books and merchandise with blasphemies or explicit content.”
Bodious Bookstore denied in a statement on Instagram last week that any specific category is being prohibited. However, he said that “he temporarily withdrew some titles for his review.”
“While many have returned to the shelves or have been relocated in more appropriate sections, some will not return as we adjust our offers,” said the statement.
Nichole Murphy had been voluntary at Bodious Bookstore since 2023 helping to facilitate reading clubs and community events. He had just started working in the store on April 2 when, only six days later, the book’s removals began, he said.
Murphy said it was on the floor the day the management began to extract LGBTQ titles from the shelves. He refused to participate in the removals themselves, he said, but then he was directed to eliminate the titles of the store’s inventory system, which he reluctantly did. She spoke, informing the management that the exclusive elimination of the LGBTQ titles was discriminatory and that it violated the mission, vision and central values of the inclusion and integrity of the company, he said. In resistance, he hid queer books and documented each title deleted from the system.
“I refused to get any book book. There were never criteria for the books that were eliminated,” he said. “Management began to pull anything that seems strange: books with photos of two girls kissing on the cover or romance books with main characters that have the same pronouns. These were not sexually explicit or profane materials.”
Murphy, the former employee who asked to remain in anonymity, and a current employee who requested anonymity due to the fear of reprisals from scholars, said O’Connor told them that he had a meeting with Rishy Studer, who, O’Connor said, told him to eliminate LGBTQ books. O’Conner told employees that Studer also directed him to pull the witchcraft books, what former employees say it was an attempt to disguise queer target removals. Murphy resigned on April 22, and the books were still being removed until their last day, he said. At least five of the 10 members of the bookstore staff, including Murphy, told NBC News that they had resigned since the books began to be eliminated.
Regarding the meeting between O’Connor and Rishy Studer, Quint Studer said in an email that Rishy “never mentioned specific titles or categories” and that “all conversations considered language in the children’s area.”
O’Connor did not respond to a request for comments on the meeting.
According to Melissa Smith, former Bodacious Bookstore manager who resigned on April 28 for the alleged censorship practices of the store, is not the first time that LGBTQ books are attacked.
Smith, who joined Bodacious in 2021, was proud to build his reading club community and ensure that the store offered diverse and representative reading materials. She was not in the store when the most recent removals began, since she had been a family and medical license since the beginning of March. However, in July 2022, while on vacation, he said, the store implemented a stealthy policy to exclude LGBTQ books from the children’s section after a customer complaint about Alex Gino’s book “Melissa” by Alex Gino, about a transgender young woman. Despite politics, a book, “My Mommies Love Me”, was ordered by mistake for Mother’s Day and quickly withdrew last month during the broader elimination of queer titles, according to Murphy and the two former employees.
“I even created a section of books prohibited in the store in February due to the demand of the clients of these titles,” said Smith. “That is the objective of books: see yourself represented or understand the experience of another person.
While the bookstore argues that it is not prohibiting books or LGBTQ content, examining books only to create a space “for the family”, Murphy and the two employees who asked to be anonymous also reported the elimination of strange congratulations and proud stickers, including a mother’s day card that was wrongly identified as representing a surgical family. Several former employees, authors and community members have questioned whether the definition of “family” includes LGBTQ families.
The author for young adults, Ginny Myers Sain, planned to visit the store on April 26 for the National Day of the Independent Library to promote her new release, “When the Bones Sing”. However, he canceled its appearance after the store could not clarify which books were being attacked for elimination and what qualified as “family”, then published a widely shared statement on Facebook condemning the store for censorship.
“We hope that independent libraries lead the position against this kind of thing, do not rely on it,” he told NBC News. “Readers have us. As someone who writes for teenagers, I feel that obligation particularly deeply. All children deserve to enter their local bookstore and be reflected and celebrated in the books they find there. And everyone knows that, in history, people who prohibit books have never been the good ones.”
According to former employees, the bookstore management is using the non -profit organization Common Sense Media to examine the titles for elimination or possible return to the shelves. While educators, librarians and families commonly use the platform to evaluate age grades in books and media, Murphy and one of the employees who asked to be anonymous argue that it was never intended as a tool to restrict access to books. It is not clear if employees will be allowed the queer books of special order or other titles that are no longer transported in the store, since many report that all orders now require management approval.
“My manager told me that, as a private business, they do not have to sell or serve certain people, which implies that queer families can buy elsewhere,” said the current employee who requested anonymity. “From the political and commercial point of view, I think it was a stupid decision to get the books, because it is actually more political than not attracting them.”
The employee said that none of the deleted titles has been returned to the shelves, although the students contradicted that both in their public statements and in NBC News.
