‘Chipping away at democracy': authors fear outcome of US supreme court's LGBTQ+ book ruling

The Guardian

14 hours ago

Sarah Brannen, an illustrator and children's book author, was riding in the car with her sister when she received an alert on her phone in late June. She was in a group chat with other authors whose books were being debated in a US supreme court case, and the messages soon poured in. Her book, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, highlights a same-sex marriage, and is at the center of a contentious case that could have widespread implications for public school education throughout the nation.
As per the 27 June ruling, a group of Maryland parents have the option to remove their public elementary school students from classes where Uncle Bobby's Wedding and other storybooks with LGBTQ+ themes are read. The justices decided through a 6-3 vote that the Montgomery county school board violated parents' right to freely exercise their religion by forbidding kids from opting out of instruction. The parents argued that the board impeded them from teaching their kids about gender and sexuality in a way that aligned with their belief system.
'I'm terribly concerned that one of the implications of this is that LGBTQ children and children with LGBTQ families will see some children having to leave the classroom because they're reading a book about their families,' Brannen told the Guardian. 'I think it is just a terrible thing to tell young children that there's something wrong with them so that some children can't even hear about their family.'
Brannen and other authors whose books are at the center of the case fear that the ruling could lead to parents taking their children out of any lessons that they disagree with in the future, including inclusive tellings of history. Additionally, they contend that it's important that public school education reflects the world, which consists of diverse family structures, gender and sexual identities. Teaching kids about LGBTQ+ people and diverse families can make them more empathetic and socially competent, studies have found. Along with Uncle Bobby's Wedding, which was illustrated by Lucia Soto, the parents' complaint included six other books, including Born Ready by Jodie Patterson, My Rainbow by DeShanna Neal and Trinity Neal, and Pride Puppy! by Robin Stevenson.
'When you start to chip away at what public education was created to do,' said Neal, 'you are chipping away at the very foundation of what democracy, and liberty and freedom are supposed to be.'
Research has shown that it is never too young to expose children to diversity, said Rachel H Farr, a University of Kentucky professor and associate chair of psychology. Her work focuses on LGBTQ+ parents and families. She has found that kids with LGBTQ+ parents report having higher social competence than their peers because they have learned to accept that it is OK for people to be different. Exposure to diverse family structures through books, she said, could also help kids with heterosexual parents better understand the world around them.
'When children learn about people who may be different than they are, that can help with things like understanding … that people can have a different point of view,' Farr said. 'That can help with things like perspective taking, kindness, empathy, a sense of belonging: things that I think many of us would argue are experiences and skills that we want children and people around us to have.'
In Born Ready, a transgender boy expresses his frustration with being misgendered, until he comes to a place where he feels affirmed in his gender identity. For Patterson, the recent ruling symbolizes a shift in education from a place where preconceived beliefs are challenged and individual thoughts are formed, to a space where students are taught from a narrow perspective. It is likely that students will encounter LGBTQ+ people throughout their lives, she said, and it is important that they be prepared.
'It is imperative to have experiences that are beyond the belief you might hold at that moment, so that we can be a talented country with critical thinkers that can move America forward,' Patterson said. 'And I do believe that all the progress that we've seen in America has been through collaboration through thought, through bringing opposing opinions together and finding a space that is not necessarily one or the other but a combination.'
If parents can choose to opt their children out of subjects that they don't believe in, she said, 'does that also allow for people like Native Americans to opt out of a story about Christopher Columbus or Black families to opt out of what we call American history, which is often unjustly told through the eyes of white men?' Patterson sees it as dangerous for people to not be exposed to ideas that they disagree with, because it makes them singularly informed.
In the dissenting opinion of the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the decision 'threatens the very essence of a public education', adding that it 'strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society'.
According to Farr's research, schools are an important platform for children to learn how to form their opinions. Exposure to diversity, she said, has been shown to instill children with values of respect and kindness.
'The flip side of not exposing kids to diversity, unfortunately, is that the opposite can happen. It might inadvertently increase bias, suggesting that there is only one right way to think or to be in the world,' Farr said, 'as opposed to developing an appreciation that there's a lot of different ways to be in the world, and to express oneself.'
Stevenson, the author of Pride Puppy, a story about a queer family attending a Pride parade, thinks that allowing students to leave the classroom will also make queer families invisible. The ruling 'segregates books about queer people, books about families like mine, and treats these books differently from other books, and in so doing, it sends a terribly harmful message to all kids, but particularly to kids who are LGBTQ+ themselves, and kids from LGBTQ+ families', Stevenson said. 'It also has the potential to accelerate this epidemic of book bans that we are already in the midst of.'
As the US supreme court deliberated on the case, DeShanna Neal, a Delaware representative and co-author of My Rainbow, worked with their legislative colleagues on a bill to protect book bans in the state of Delaware. In My Rainbow, Neal makes a rainbow-colored wig for their trans daughter, Trinity, to help her express her gender identity. The Freedom to Read Act passed on 30 June, which Neal sees as a sign that they and their colleagues are working to keep the state safe. After it passed, Neal received a text message from a colleague that read: 'You will never have to worry about My Rainbow being banned in Delaware.'