More Attempts to Ban LGBTQ Kids’ Books–and What You Can Do

At least three communities—in California, Virginia, and West Virginia—are facing recent attempts to ban LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books. Here’s what’s happening—and how you can fight censorship in your communities.

Prince and Knight

The Upshur County Public Library in West Virginia pulled Daniel Haack’s Prince & Knight off the shelves after a pastor wrote in a conservative local blog that it was “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children, especially boys, into the LGBTQA lifestyle,” reported NBC affiliate WVVA. The library Thursday postponed a decision on whether to allow it back into the children’s section or move it to the young adult area, according to Metro Weekly.

Moving it to the young adult area would be ridiculous. It’s a children’s picture book about a prince and knight who fall in love, and it’s as G-rated a story as one could imagine. (Here’s my review.) Aside from the fact that it’s perfectly appropriate for young children, teens would likely be embarrassed to be caught reading something so clearly intended for younger audiences.

The pastor may not have realized, however, that in picking this book to attack, he immediately caught the attention of GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization, which has partnered with Little Bee Books to produce Prince & Knight and other LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books. GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis (herself a lesbian mom) responded with a statement saying, “The decision to remove Prince & Knight from the shelves of the Upshur County Public Library is an act of discrimination, plain and simple. Inclusive children’s books do not “indoctrinate” but do allow LGBTQ families and their children the chance to see themselves reflected in the world.”

And the American Library Association’s (ALA’s) Office of Intellectual Freedom swung into action with a pointed letter to the Upshur County Library Board, noting the library’s own policy against censorship of materials, “including those that feature LGBTQ+ characters or address LGBTQ+ themes,” and citing a 2000 federal court case that “ruled that removing books from the children’s area of the library to the adult section because of a citizen group’s disapproval of the ideas and themes contained in those books … violated library users’ First Amendment rights.”

All parents have the right to influence their own child’s education. Equally true: No parent has the right to dictate the education of all children based on their own personal beliefs.

Meanwhile, in Loudoun County, Virginia, the school board is reviewing challenges to several LGBTQ-inclusive books added to classrooms as part of a diversity initiative. The books include Prince & Knight, My Princess Boy, and (for  young adults) Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out. The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and author David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy; Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List) are standing up for the books, however; they wrote an op-ed for the Loudoun Times-Mirror, noting astutely, “All parents have the right to influence their own child’s education. Equally true: No parent has the right to dictate the education of all children based on their own personal beliefs.” They add, “For LGBTQ+ kids, the literature can be a lifeline—a word that is not a metaphor here…. And for kids who don’t identify as LGBTQ+, the books provide a window into what kids around them are going through, which helps them become better allies and better people.”

Across the country, in South Pasadena, California, the parent of two elementary school spoke a recent school board meeting to express her concerns (first shared in June) about LGBTQ content in the curriculum—content, it should be noted, that is required by state law. “I have deep concerns for my children being exposed to sexual orientation/gender-identity content at the younger age,” she said, according to the South Pasadena Review, She insisted, “I have both gay and lesbian friends,” and said she was fine with books that show two moms or two dads, but objected to the book I Am Jazz, about a transgender girl, and wanted the school curriculum to be taught “without the concept of gender identity.” That seems contradictory, if she has “deep concerns” about “sexual orientation/gender-identity content” but yet is okay with books showing same-sex parents. Sounds like she’s not really okay with either.

As I wrote back in 2007, too, the curriculum is only part of the picture. Does the far-right want to ban my son from talking in class about playing baseball with his two moms? Will they bar him from bringing in a rainbow flag for show-and-tell? What about a photo of his family with their arms around each other? What if he attended his moms’ wedding during summer vacation? Is that a forbidden essay topic, or is it allowed as long as he doesn’t read it in front of the class like all of the other children? The argument extends to other children with LGBTQ parents; LGBTQ children; and the many straight, cisgender children with straight, cisgender parents who may nevertheless have LGBTQ relatives. Banning books because they have LGBTQ characters ultimately means banning many children from talking freely about their families and themselves, making them feel censored and segregated. We’re not an abstraction; we’re part of the larger community, and our children are learning next to everyone else’s.

These challenges to LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books unfortunately shouldn’t come as a surprise. More than half the books in the ALA’s latest Top Ten Most Challenged Books list are there because someone objected to their LGBTQ content. Author Robin Stevenson had a talk canceled recently because of her book’s LGBTQ content; so did Lesléa Newman, who has been fighting challenges since the early 1990s when controversy erupted over her Heather Has Two Mommies, one of the first picture books to show clearly LGBTQ characters. A case involving an attempted challenge to King & King, another fairy tale about a same-sex couple, was in 2008 even appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which dismissed it, upholding the lower court’s ruling that: “There is no free exercise right to be free from any reference in public elementary schools to the existence of families in which the parents are of different gender combinations.”

What can we do to help counter censorship of LGBTQ books?

We can also support LGBTQ children’s books generally by:

  • Recommending LGBTQ-inclusive titles to libraries and teachers and buying them ourselves if our means allow.
  • Rating and reviewing LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books at online bookstores. Those who oppose them do so; we should, too. Be critical of the books on their literary or artistic merits if they warrant it (though this year’s batch seems quite good overall), but support the idea that they include LGBTQ characters.
  • Likewise, give them a plug on social media and tag the publisher (and the author and illustrator) so they know such books are needed and supported.

(I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program that provides a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.)

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