William Johnson, My Friend and a Free Expression Advocate, Turned The Tables On Me
I wanted to Q&A William, who just moved to Florida to fight book bans. But he wanted to Q&A me! So we queried each other—on everything from our first porn to living a meaningful life in dark times.
Happy Tuesday, Caftaners. I hope you had a good long weekend. Among other things, I went to a daytime outdoor party called Mother Disco with one of my besties, William Johnson…
…who is back in NYC briefly after having moved to Miami for his job for the literary advocacy and free-expression group PEN America. (Before that, he was the deputy director of the LGBTQ group Lambda Literary, which is how I got to know him better.) William’s down in Florida helping different groups fight the onslaught of school-library book bans that have swept across the state during its rather swift transition from purple to deep red.
But only a few days before we got together in NYC, we did this long-planned talk that follows. I think it’s the first Caftan talk I’ve done with someone I consider a really good friend, not just an acquaintance. I told William I thought we’d have a good talk because our actual talks are a bit like Caftan talks, all over the place on a variety of topics. And he said he was game as long as he also got to ask me questions, because he says he’s long been intrigued by the way I do these talks and the patterns he sees in my questions from one talk to another. So I said, yeah, what the hell, let’s do it.
And so here we go, and boy did we run the gamut—from tales of our first encounters with gay porn to moments of physical violence we’ve experienced in relationships to whether we think we still have sexual currency (I’m 55 and William is 51) to how one aims to do the right thing and be a good person/ally in these nightmare times.
If you subscribe for free and continue to like what you read, please consider subscribing for $5/month. If you already do, THANK YOU! You are helping me grow this project a little bit more every day. So here we go with William…
William, I think this is the first Caftan I’ve ever done with a very close friend. What should we talk about? What’s going to be our copy?
Well, what do you want to know? All your interviews are about things that you need to know. So, what…?
Tell me about your job.
I am director of the Florida office of PEN America. Before that I was the director of national engagement and membership. Florida is the blueprint, unfortunately, for how censorious bills and school boards, like Moms for Liberty originated in Florida and now are being exported around the country. So PEN realized it was really key for us to be here, because what starts in Florida, especially now with this current federal administration, is quickly exported.
What’s the breadth of these censorship laws in Florida?
PEN has currently recorded about 10,000 book bans across the country, which means books that are removed without due process. So say you are a parent and you say, “I don’t want my kid reading Ulysses, I think it’s porn.” Just one parent can do that. Of the 10,000, 4,000 of those books happened in Florida.
So you’re saying that 10,000 individual titles have been banned around the country? Or 10,000 instances of a title being banned?
Florida has 40% right now of all documented book bans. So that 10,000 is the number of instances of book bans, not titles.
What is a book ban exactly? Does the community ban one title or a selected list of titles?
This is how it works: You’ll have a group like Moms for Liberty that creates a master list of books being banned. Perhaps on this list, there will be 2,000 unique titles, which are given to all these school boards to challenge. It’s a list of titles recommended for ban. However, when a book is challenged, there is usually due process. The American Library Association recommends that you do not remove a book just because it’s challenged. But in Florida, you’ll just see the books being pulled off the shelves.
Do these bans face legal challenges?
Yes. PEN America has a lawsuit pending in Escambia County, which is where Pensacola is.
We’ve partnered with Penguin Random House to challenge it, and now it’s working its way through Florida’s state court system. The case is stayed right now on procedural issues.
OK. Tell us about what you do in your new job on a daily basis.
The job has two pillars. One is literary engagement—bringing writers in conversation with the public. One of the joys of my job is being in conversation with writers. I get to help cultivate and support literary culture in Florida. I have some Pride stuff lined up. I’m having a conversation in June with the author Kristen Arnett at an indie bookstore outside Daytona Beach called Ferns and Fables.
The other part involves working with stakeholders on the ground who, for lack of a better word, are freaked out by what is happening with the censorship and are fighting back. So it’s supporting people who are already doing the work.
The bans also affect book buying. If you’re a library buyer and you know that an LGBTQ book, one with a protagonist of color, one that deals with race or history, is likely to be banned, you’re not buying them. There’s a self-censorship happening. Commercial booksellers are still buying, but Ferns and Fables, the store I mentioned, told me that people were very upset that they had LGBTQ books on the shelves—a private, independent bookstore.
My work in Florida primarily focuses on banning books in school libraries. From the 2023-24 school year, PEN recorded over 10,000 instances of banned books across 53 states, in 415 public school districts. It affected over 4,000 unique titles. In Florida, the most commonly banned books are those with people of color and LGBTQ characters, with the other banned books having some kind of sexual content.
When these bans happen in a school, how does the anti-censorship side fight back?
Do you know who’s on your school board? Most of us don’t. However, it’s the school board that makes the choice. Our research has shown that most people believe in and trust their librarians to curate. But most folks don’t know that they have a choice in making sure that their libraries remain free of censorship, and you do that by who you vote for on your school board. We also conduct advocacy campaigns, such as “Know Your Community.” We're a 501c3 [a kind of nonprofit that is not allowed to take sides in political contests] so we don't advocate for particular candidates, but we say, “Hey, get involved.”
But what you’re seeing right now comes out of the parental rights anti-mask movement that was born out of Covid. “We don't trust the schools, we don’t trust the teacher.” And then pair that with a lot of funding from groups and people who want to destroy public education in general.
Do you think it’s reasonable to have parents sign a permission slip that their kids read certain titles?
The reasonable solution is that librarians and teachers are trained to know if a book is age-appropriate. There was a recently proposed state House Bill, House Bill 1539, which did not pass, aimed at changing what is deemed obscene. This bill referenced the Supreme Court precedent established by the Miller Test, which states that a work needs to be viewed as a whole. You can’t take Ulysses and say, “Here’s a sex scene—this whole book is porn.” Some reps in the Florida state house wanted to introduce a bill that would remove the Miller Test, meaning that any work could be taken out of context and be considered porn and hence inappropriate.
I had this older Black representative reach out to me and ask, “Baby, can you tell me something? Is there porn in schools?” And I said, “No. Teachers and librarians, it’s their job to make sure that the work is age-appropriate and is given in context. Trust them. They know.” She said, “That’s what I thought!”
Now, does a parent have the right to ensure that their children don’t have access to certain books? Yes. But they don’t have the right to take that from every parent. Imagine if a parent came in and said, “I don’t want my kids reading The Color Purple,” and that meant that every kid couldn’t read it. That’s what we’re seeing happen.
But should parents have the right to say, “I don’t want my kids reading this or that book?” To recuse their own child from that assignment?
That’s a tricky one. There’s a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on that right now. You have the right to take your kids out of school and homeschool them, but I think it’s a scary precedent and a slippery slope. This agenda has employed fuzzy, coded language to manufacture moral panic and exert control over what students can read and learn in schools, not in the hands of all parents, but in the hands of a tiny segment of citizens, including some who are not even parents but community members. The cumulative effect has been to place some parents’ ideological preferences above all others, tie the hands of educators, and limit students’ access to information through curricular prohibitions and book bans.
Okay. So you’re living in Miami now, William. What is it like living there after a lifetime in New York, except for your Boston college years?
It’s like going to college, but in your new fifties. It’s a new place, you don’t know anyone, you’re excited to explore new things, but now I’m 51. So I know myself a lot better. It tempers your curiosity. When you’re in your twenties, you walk through every door you encounter…Or I did. Now, not so much. So it’s interesting to have to build a life from scratch at this stage of my life.
You have a long-term partner in NYC.
So even though you’re alone down there…
Yeah, and I’m not looking for sex or a lover. I’m just looking for friendship. Making friends in your fifties in a new place is an interesting experience. Finding lovers is a little bit easier than finding friends. Because many gay men make new friends through sex, but I don’t.
Because you have a monogamous relationship. Can we say that?
Yes, we can.
Do you feel a genuine need to make friends there, or do you think you’ll only stay for a short time, so why bother?
I feel like I need to make friends. I like making friends! And I’m figuring it out.
When I’m in Miami, it feels kind of plastic and antiseptic compared to New York. Do you feel that way?
I disagree. I think people are genuine. Every city has its own aesthetics and its own strange tapestry. I’ve met some genuine people. New York, though, is so huge that you find a wealth of your tribe fairly easily. My New York friends I’ve had forever. I know where to find my group of Black gay artsy-fartsy folks. Here, I don’t. But we’ll see.
You know that I’m jealous of people who grew up in NYC. And I love talking to people about NYC in the 70s and 80s. So let’s talk a little bit about your childhood growing up in Brooklyn with this dad who, to me, seemed so cool.
So what’s your Crooklyn, William?
I was actually born in Detroit, and we moved to NYC in the 1980s. My mom was the executive Director of the National Girl Scouts office in NYC. Free Girl Scout cookies all around!
What were your favorite cookies? Mine were Samoas and Thin Mints.
Mine were the trefoils—the shortbread.
But then my parents divorced, and my mom moved to Westchester and dad moved to Brooklyn and worked for a community development group from home, pre-Internet. I lived between them. My dad would always take me to do cultural things, like seeing movies at the Angelika. He was a Black bohemian, a polymath. He liked film, art and music. He’d take me to see Brian DePalma because he read Pauline Kael. He was a curious man. He lived in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn—a place that escapes the white imagination. We lived in a building, 560 State Street, that was a Black cultural mecca—artists, music executives, and people who worked in nonprofits.
It was the Black creative middle class.
Yes. You could afford to live there. Jay-Z lived in that building. My sister married his cousin.
When I was in ninth grade, my parents found out I was gay. My father bought The Village Voice, which I found to be so gay.
In the back, there were ads for gay phone lines. And I called them constantly. I ran up a $1,000 phone bill.
Didn’t you know you were going to get caught?
I was so horny. I was in ninth grade and couldn’t help myself. The phone bills would come, and I would shred them.
What would you say on the phone lines?
It would be like “Press 1 if you’re a top and 2 if you’re a bottom.” I didn’t even know what that meant! Guys would be like, “Are you into poppers?” I thought they meant Pez candies. I had no idea; there was no context. I just knew that the phone ads and the ad for the Chelsea Gym in the Voice were hot.
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