A Florida legislator has introduced a bill that would expand the state’s “Don’t Say Gay/LGBTQ” law to completely ban instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity from pre-K through eighth grade classrooms and ban the use of pronouns and names aligned with transgender and nonbinary students’ gender identities in schools.
The most-banned picture books in schools during the 2021-22 academic year feature LGBTQ and/or people of color protagonists, according to a new list from PEN America. That’s sadly unsurprising. Let’s look a little more closely at what we can learn from this, however.
More than half of the LGBTQ+ parents surveyed considered leaving Florida because of its so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, according to a new study, and the vast majority—nearly 90 percent—are worried about its effect on their children and family.
One last roundup before 2022 winds to a close! Here are some of the stories of LGBTQ parents and our kids that I haven’t covered already.
What were the major advances—and setbacks—for LGBTQ families in 2022? I asked several leading experts to share their thoughts, and all agreed there had been many obstacles—but also reasons for hope.
Like many in the LGBTQ community, I am still grieving over those murdered at Club Q in Colorado Springs last month. I am also thinking about how much anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has created a climate in which such violence can germinate, and how much a purported concern over children’s well-being has played into that rhetoric. We need to reclaim the narrative of what it means to think of the children.
Non-profit Pride and Less Prejudice, which has donated over 7,500 LGBTQ-inclusive picture books to elementary school classrooms in the U.S. and Canada since its founding in 2019, is holding a virtual auction through this weekend so they can send 800 more. Check out some of the amazing offerings!
This week marks Banned Books Week, the American Library Association’s (ALA’s) annual celebration of the freedom to read—but this year feels more like a call to action than a celebration. Book bans and other attempts at censorship, largely targeting the LGBTQ and other marginalized communities, are raging across the country. Here’s what’s happening, how others are fighting back, and how you can help.
It’s Banned Books Week, during a year that has seen record numbers of bans and challenges. Let’s kick things off by looking at some of the picture books that have been targeted recently for being LGBTQ inclusive.
Amidst a wave of book bans and challenges around the country, five—yes, five!—services are actually providing free, LGBTQ-inclusive books to schools and educators. Here’s how to request them.
