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.
The Upshur County Public Library in West Virginia pulled Daniel Haack’s Prince & Knight
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.
, 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
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
What can we do to help counter censorship of LGBTQ books?
- NCAC has a good resource to help Defend LGBTQ Stories and offers other general resources for parents and educators on what to do if a book is threatened in our communities. You can report such threats here.
- NCAS is also promoting the #UncensoredPride hashtag on social media to help raise awareness of threats to LGBTQ-inclusive books.
- The ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom also offers suggestions and support for dealing with challenges, as well as a form for reporting them.
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.
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