By Sarah Holliday
The Washington Stand
A school district in Maryland just removed two LGBT-related books from their district’s curriculum, resulting in a win for the parents who didn’t want their children exposed to the material in the classroom. However, the books — and other LGBT material — still remain on the shelves of the school libraries.
The battle has been going on for the last two years, when parents in the Montgomery County school district began protesting over the county school board’s decision to add roughly 20 books with sexuality and gender-centric themes to their fall of 2022 curriculum in a collection called the “Pride Storybooks.” Geared towards students from pre-K to eighth grade, some of these materials were used in the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum, and parents wanted to be able to pull their kids out of it. The protests turned into a lawsuit, however, when the district denied their ability to do so in 2023.
Last week, The Washington Post noticed two books were removed from the ELA curriculum — “Pride Puppy!” and “My Rainbow.” Notably, the specific reasons for why these books were disapproved for classroom use have not been provided. However, according to the school’s spokeswoman Liliana Lopez, the “school officials reevaluated the use of the books instructionally on their own accord, not due to a request from a parent.”
Concerning the content of the removed books, the district’s database portrays “Pride Puppy!” as a story about “a young child and their family” that go and “celebrate Pride Day by attending a PRIDE parade.” The concern regarding this book, also according to the database, is that the book may require “more explicit instruction of vocabulary and concepts beyond the curriculum standards.”
The other book, “My Rainbow,” features “a Black, autistic, transgender girl named Trinity” whose family helps to create a wig that “represents her true self.” The database also noted that “the author and illustrator are advocates for transgender rights and awareness.” It listed a similar concern in that the book “could potentially require teachers to explicitly teach vocabulary terms outside the context of the lesson.”
Even with the books’ removal, a search of the district’s database comes up with over 80 results of “LGBT”-related titles. Some of the titles include “ABC’s of LGBT+,” “Are you LGBTQ?,” “Child’s Introduction to Pride,” “LGBTQ: The Survival Guide for Lesiban [sic] Gay Bisexual Transgender and Questioning Teens,” and “Free to be me: an LGBTQ+ journal of love, pride & finding your inner rainbow.” There are also additional books that have been referenced in light of the lawsuit that are still included in the list of classroom approved instructional material.
Considering how many LGBT-related materials the school district continues to offer, Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon found their decision to remove two of the books from the ELA curriculum to be “an interesting move.” She told The Washington Stand, “They seem to be acknowledging that there are problems with these particular titles, but we don’t know how they have come to this realization, nor what books have replaced those removed from the curriculum.”
According to Kilgannon, there’s also information lacking as to whether the “teachers are simply allowed to select their own books from a district approved list” moving forward. But regardless of what played into the district’s decision, Kilgannon urged, “We need to continue to push back on these kinds of lessons being included in schools at all. It’s not the job of schools to normalize or explain the sexual relationships of adults, in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion, or for any other reason.”
“To cloak sexually themed lessons as DEI,” Kilgannon concluded, “is dishonest, unfair, and disrespectful to parents.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
