Reading about the sacking of a Florida school principal after a parent complained students were exposed to “pornography” – in the form of Michelangelo’s statue of David – I felt that familiar, “thank God we’re not America” smugness. When measured against our AUKUS ally, Australia’s culture wars are blissfully anaemic.

The David episode at the Christian charter school did, however, prompt a disturbing chain of thought involving porn, power and a related p-word, the anatomical reality of which three angry parents evidently did not want their 11- to 12-year-olds confronting in art history class.

These thoughts of mine led, horrifically, to Donald Trump – oops! I meant to give a trigger warning that his name would appear in this piece, which meddles in adult themes.

Two of the irate parents complained to the board of Tallahassee Classical School that they weren’t warned their children would encounter an image of Michelangelo’s iconic artwork. Another described the 5.17-metre statue of an entirely naked David, the biblical giant slayer, as pornographic. Shocking that three angry parents can force a principal’s resignation. Not at all shocking that for some Americans the bare representation of the human body is tantamount to pornography.

But this story has special currency because it comes amid an intensifying educational crusade by Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, widely tipped to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. State legislators are considering a draft law that would curtail sex education in schools, banning any instruction on menstruation before sixth grade. As many girls in that age group have already started bleeding, they’re at risk of a monumental freak-out at their first period.

Florida has already limited how sexuality can be taught, through the state’s notorious “don’t say gay” laws. That theme might also be relevant here. Michelangelo’s rendering of the biblical king of Israel is notable not only for its bodily realism but also for the artist’s undisguised admiration for his subject, even as he’s depicted in a state of contemplation.

I don’t need to labour the alleged homoerotic subtext through the ages: Michelangelo’s ardent poems to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri; David’s covenant with the nimble archer Jonathan, whose love the king declared was “more wonderful than the love of women,” and no one doubts his authority to make such a comparison. Nothing like the Book of Samuel for violence, intrigue and promiscuity.

It is hardly news that lust drives so much of male endeavour, be it with sword or marble, or Sigmund Freud never did exist. That doesn’t make Michelangelo’s masterpiece porn, but I’m not sure we can claim his inspiration sprang entirely from the celestial without any contribution from the carnal.