A recent filing in an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case about LGBTQ books in the classroom shows that the plaintiffs are continuing to misrepresent the books they are targeting. One author shared her thoughts with me on how her book is being twisted.
The case began when Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland added several optional, LGBTQ-inclusive picture books to its supplemental curriculum in 2022, and a few parents objected. The key question is whether the parents’ religious freedom is violated if they are not given the chance to opt out their children before LGBTQ-inclusive picture books are read in a classroom. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case on April 22; see my earlier post for more details.
In a court filing last Friday, the plaintiffs say that although the MCPS board “claim[s] no students are asked to change their beliefs and … there is no evidence of coercion,” the board in the plaintiffs’ view “doesn’t meaningfully engage the books’ instruction that gender identity need not ‘make sense,’ that pronouns change ‘like the weather,’ that ‘blush[ing] hot’ at a classmate is an appropriate topic for classroom discussion, or that children should ‘rewrite the norms’ on sex and gender and choose whichever bathroom is most “comfy” for them.
It’s unsurprising—but still awful—that the plaintiffs object to what four of the books (Born Ready; What Are Your Words? ; IntersectionAllies; and Jacob’s Room to Choose) say about gender identity and pronouns. Let’s look more closely, however, at the claim about “‘blush[ing] hot’ at a classmate,” for some further explanation and debunking.
The book referenced is Love, Violet, by Charlotte Sullivan Wild, illustrated by Charlene Chua (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), about a girl who wants to give a valentine to her crush. It won a Stonewall Book Award for LGBTQ children’s literature from the American Library Association and was a Charlotte Huck Honor Book, an accolade given by the National Council of Teachers of English to “fiction that has the potential to transform children’s lives by inviting compassion, imagination, and wonder.” It’s a gem of a book.
The plaintiffs, however, are reprising what they said in the Appendix to their original petition (PDF) to the Supreme Court: “A book mandated for fourth graders describes a child ‘blush[ing] hot’ as she daydreams about ‘galloping off’ with a classmate who makes her ‘heart skip.’” They seem to be implying that there’s some sexual connotation here.
Wild was kind enough to discuss her thoughts with me about the plaintiff’s misinterpretation, and given me permission to share from her e-mail:
They’ve taken the phrase “blushed hot” from Love, Violet completely out of context. In that scene, Violet’s classmates are teasing her. She blushes from embarrassment. Mira, on whom she has an innocent crush, isn’t even on that page. Twisting something innocent about a child character to make it seem sexual—is deeply disturbing. It’s disturbing that adult viewers of these books are sexualizing innocent stories about children. That is the violation. And it’s an old trick. It requires willful dishonesty. And it’s effective. It puts a target on LGBTQIA+ people’s backs. Especially children. Especially people with intersectional identities. Stereotyping LGBTQIA+ people of every age and behavior as sexualized and predatory endangers us. It fires up bullies, young and old. It justifies the destruction of our civil and human rights. It inspires the hate mail authors, illustrators, librarians, and educators receive, the threats and accusations that have nothing to do with our actual actions. It leads to violence.
I was raised with these stereotypes, particularly in the Evangelical world. I heard them on Christian radio. I heard them casually in the halls and in faculty meetings at the Evangelical college where I once taught. They were the reason I came out publicly, to put a face on the people my colleagues were blithely maligning without consideration of the consequences.
These lies are also why I wrote Love, Violet—to put a face on queer childhood, to portray the innocence we all deserved as queer children. I wanted to show ordinaryness, the joy of just being, that should belong to LGBTQIA+ children, too. All young people deserve the freedom to be childlike and innocent. No exceptions.
Here’s the relevant page:
The plaintiffs’ modus operandi, however, seems to be imagining sexual content that isn’t there in the books they are challenging. Another example: In their initial petition to the Supreme Court, they say of Robin Stevenson’s Pride Puppy, illustrated by Julie McLaughlin (Orca), “The book invites students to search for various images, including ‘underwear,’ ‘leather,’ ‘lip ring,’ ‘[drag] king’ and ‘[drag] queen,’ and ‘Marsha P. Johnson,’ a controversial LGBTQ activist and sex worker.”
The concatenation of those words by the plaintiffs feels intended to create an image of sex and kink. One might imagine a pierced, underwear-and-leather-clad drag queen doing sex work. That’s totally inaccurate; only two of the items in question are even on the same page (because it’s an alphabet book, with one letter per page or spread), and there’s no connection between any of them. McLaughlin herself has responded at length to the aspersions, and I direct you to her post for further analysis of how ridiculous the plaintiffs’ interpretation is. (Side note: Pride Puppy and My Rainbow, both part of the original group of targeted books in the case, are no longer approved for instructional use in MCPS schools, ostensibly because they “could require teachers to explicitly teach vocabulary terms outside the context of the lesson,” reports the Washington Post. Make of that what you will.)
We’ve been here before. Two early LGBTQ-inclusive picture books, Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate, by Michael Willhoite, were suggested readings in a “Rainbow Curriculum” created by New York City Public Schools in the early 1990s to teach first-graders respect for all. Some found this scandalous. Mary Cummins, president of a school district in Queens, said in a 1992 interview with 60 Minutes that she “will not expand her curriculum to include materials that promote sodomy.” (See Heather author Lesléa Newman’s 1997 interview with the Horn Book.) There is of course no sodomy or even a hint of anything sexual in either book. More than three decades later, anti-LGBTQ folks are still making up similar smears.
I’ll have more on the Mahmoud case in the coming days. For the moment, note that LGBTQ and human rights advocates, educators, faith leaders, and many others are holding a Rally for Inclusive Education outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 22, the day the court hears the case. Organizers and supporters have shared:
- A social media toolkit to help spread the word;
- A guide to holding book events in your area that day if you can’t make it to DC; and
- A fun activity pack for kids featuring coloring images and activities drawn from and inspired by some of the books in the case.
Dana, thank you so much for this piece, and for sharing the link to Julie McLaughlin’s post about Pride Puppy. I so appreciate your support in challenging the misinformation that is circulating about our books.