[opinion] No More Penguins, Please.

Here's another punch in the fight over teaching about same-sex parents in schools. This book, however, is no sneaky gay penguin book (And Tango Make Three): it's pointedly about a prince who, in his own words has, "never cared much for princesses."

Personally, I'm giddy. I grew up in a world without a single reference to gayness (outside of locker room taunts), without a single role model to tell me that (1) not every kid felt the way I did, and therefore I was, in fact, different; and (2) that it's ok--it's possible to be gay and be happy and be healthy. So, when my nieces and nephews came of age, I gay penguined them with Bend It Like Beckham, a movie that discusses religious and cultural acceptance, sexual orientation (indirectly), and soccer. My family's next generation would not go through life ignorant that gay people exist. They would not be taken by surprise.

And that's the strategy of this Massachusetts school. According to the principal, "Lexington is committed to teaching children about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal." The parents spin it the other way. "They're trying to indoctrinate our children," Robin Wirthlin responded. Yes, education is indoctrination when you don't like what is being taught.

That's the inherent problem with government speech (which public education undoubtedly is). Every statement of X by the State probably makes not-X sound less appealing. The First Amendment forbids government from abridging private speech, but says nothing about government's own speech being neutral or palatable to dissenters. Your remedy for such speech is the political process.

Now for my soap box. Queer kids, myself included, sat through public school for years and years. We read Romeo and Juliet, we read Jane Eyre. We heard about notable presidents and their wives. We stood boy-girl-boy-girl in line, whatever that was supposed to accomplish. And the whole time, even if we didn't have words for it, we were thinking or feeling in our stomachs, "What about me?"

A lot of those queer kids grew up thinking that they were broken, that their sexuality was diseased or dysfunctional in some way. Some of us realized that we were fine--society was simply not set up for the possibility of us. We were like left-handers in a sea of uncomfortable desks.

If parents such as Mrs. Wirthlin want to continue that status quo, where gay people don't exist and her children's classmates sit in emotional torment because society won't recognize their family or their affections--all because of her own moral indignation--then she is free to do so. But, the political tides are turning, and society is beginning to realize that the harm to a queer kid from being relegated to invisibility far outweighs the harm to a straight kid whose sexuality is a relative non-issue in his life.

When we read books like King and King, we're not just talking to Mrs. Wirthlin's kid. We're talking to the queer kid, or the kid with lesbian moms. We want that kid to know he's ok. Not through winks and nods and gay penguins--we want to say it outright. You're ok. Be happy.