Today is Giving Tuesday, but I’m not going to ask you to give to any particular organizations. (There are any number of good ones to support with your time and/or money, and I hope you do.) Instead, I’ll once again share some of the ways my spouse and I have tried to show our son the importance of giving.
As the LGBTQ community collectively reels from and responds to the mass shooting in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub yesterday, I want to offer a few resources for those of us whose children may have fears or questions about the tragedy.
Today marks the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a time to honor the lives of those who died because of anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. I wish all of my transgender friends and readers love and support on this day of mourning.
It’s a tough time to be an LGBTQ parent in the United States. Between legislation that threatens our ability to form and protect our families, attacks on books and media that reflect them, and concerns that impact all parents, like school shootings and pandemics, we may feel stressed and overwhelmed. Without denying those ills or our need to address them (which I have covered before and will again), I want to focus here on a few positive things to keep in mind.
A mass shooting that left six dead and two dozen injured. An unarmed Black man shot 60 times by police. Dozens of other shootings, many deadly. The loss of body autonomy for more than half our population. A white supremacist march in Boston. What can we do?
Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT)—but it’s really more than that, with two other key civil rights events also happening on this day in history!
Today marks the Day of Silence, when many students from middle grades to college choose to remain silent to protest the harm caused by harassment and discrimination of LGBTQ people in schools. This year, with a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills hitting young people especially hard, this silence needs to resonate more loudly than ever.
Many journalists, including myself, have recently reported on the increasing number of attempts to ban children’s and young adult books with LGBTQ characters or ones with other marginalized identities. In this column, however, I want to focus not on the bans themselves, but on the ways people have mobilized to stop them—and to ensure that students continue having access to books that reflect their identities and experiences and those of our diverse world.
A coalition of libraries, community groups, and children’s book creators in Rhode Island have responded to the spate of book bans around the country by creating a festival celebrating diverse children’s books and featuring two Newbery Honor authors. It will give local families a way to engage with diverse books, but also offers a model for other communities.
A Mississippi Friends of the Library group has launched a crowdfunding campaign after their town’s mayor said he is withholding $110,000 in library funds unless LGBTQ books are removed from the shelves.
