And Gemma Makes Three: A Baby for Tango’s Real Dads

“We tried to incubate a rock and that didn’t work,” jokes Justin Richardson, one of the authors of And Tango Makes Three. The truth is, however, that he and his co-author and partner, Peter Parnell, became dads themselves back in February, as the New York Times reports today. Gemma Parnell-Richardson doesn’t have feathers like Tango, but if the photo in the NYT is any indication, she’s just as cute.

To wrap up Banned Books Week, Richardson was also kind enough to share with me some of his thoughts on Tango being the most challenged book in the country for three years in a row:

We can think of lists we’d prefer to top.

I will say that, as gay men of a certain age, we are no strangers to fear and anger being directed towards us and families like ours. But unlike in the debate of gays in the military, gays at the altar, gays in the boy scouts, and so on, this time the government is squarely behind us, and that makes all the difference. And not only is the US Constitution indisputably on our side (the U.S. Supreme Court wrote about a similar case of book suppression in 1982 “Our Constitution does not permit the suppression of ideas”), but throughout these years of challenges we have had the great support of the American Library Association, the ACLU, and PEN America as well as countless teachers, librarians, parents, and most meaningful to us, children. When a group of New York City 5th graders get together to give you an award for writing a book that furthers the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., it becomes much easier to shake the image of the angry mother waving your book around on Fox News.

Best of luck to both Richardson and Parnell with their future books (More! We want more!) and, most importantly, with their new daughter. I’m sure they’ll be great dads.