Florida Bookstore Purges Queer Titles

Bodacious Bookstore & Café — once a celebrated hub for readers in Pensacola, Florida — has found itself at the center of a literary firestorm after quietly removing over 60 titles, many featuring LGBTQ themes, characters, or authors. Staff say the removal was abrupt, targeted, and in direct response to escalating political pressure in Escambia County — a region rapidly gaining a reputation as Florida’s book-banning capital.

Among the casualties: Elliot Page’s memoir Pageboy, Casey McQuiston’s queer rom-com I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Billie Jean King’s All In, and even Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper — all yanked under the guise of creating a more “family-friendly” space.

Current and former employees say the purge wasn’t just about books — it included Pride-themed greeting cards, stickers, and even a Mother’s Day card featuring two moms. The removals reportedly began after a single customer complained about profanity on a card. What followed, employees claim, was a sweeping effort to erase anything that looked even remotely “queer.”

Staff Resistance and Quiet Rebellion

Some staff refused to comply. Others quietly hid books or documented the pulled titles. One employee was sent home after refusing to remove queer titles. Another, volunteer-turned-staffer Nichole Murphy, says she was asked to delete LGBTQ books from the store’s system — a task she completed under protest before resigning weeks later.

“I refused to pull any books from the shelves,” Murphy said. “Management started pulling anything that looked queer. These were not sexually explicit or profane materials — they were just gay.”

By the time Murphy left on April 22, at least five of the store’s ten employees had either quit or resigned in protest.

The bookstore’s owners, philanthropists Quint and Mary “Rishy” Studer, have denied that books were removed for being LGBTQ-related. But internal directives, staff testimony, and the removal of specific titles — including queer children’s books and memoirs — paint a very different picture.

Censorship Cloaked in “Family-Friendly”

The removals come amid two major federal lawsuits against Escambia County for banning books, many of which deal with LGBTQ issues or racial themes. While public schools are under direct legal scrutiny, private businesses like Bodacious have more flexibility — and more responsibility — to resist the trend.

But instead of resisting, the store appears to be leaning in. “My manager told me that as a private business, they don’t have to sell or cater to certain people,” one current employee said, adding that queer families were essentially told to shop elsewhere.

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Former store manager Melissa Smith, who resigned in April, says this isn’t new. A stealth policy to keep LGBTQ books out of the children’s section was already in place back in 2022. “The whole point of books,” she said, “is to either see yourself represented or understand someone else’s experience.”

Readers and Authors Push Back

The backlash has been swift and vocal. Author Ginny Myers Sain canceled a scheduled event at Bodacious for Independent Bookstore Day after management refused to clarify what books had been banned. “We expect indie bookstores to be leading the charge against this sort of thing, not leaning into it,” she said. “And everyone knows that, in history, the people banning books have never been the good guys.”

The Studers maintain that the review process is ongoing and claim some books have returned to shelves — though staff dispute this. Titles now require managerial approval before being ordered, effectively gatekeeping LGBTQ content from both the shelves and special orders.

For a bookstore that once prided itself on community and inclusivity, the silence now is deafening — except from the customers and former staff who are making sure the story doesn’t get buried as easily as the books.

As the fight against censorship continues across America, it’s clear: the battle isn’t just happening in school board meetings. It’s in the aisles of your favorite neighborhood bookshop.