Don't Tango with the Gay Penguins

Feathers are ruffled over a book that's been pulled from an elementary school library shelf in Loudoun County, MD. The book, And Tango Makes Three, is a children's book based on the true story of two New York Central Park male penguins who raised a chick together. A parent objected that the book promotes a gay agenda and the book was pulled off the shelf. Apparently it's the gay pride march of the penguins.

Let's be clear -- there is an agenda here, and the book, while obviously portraying what happens in the natural world, promotes acceptance of non-traditional families.

This is important to me because when it comes to non-traditional families, I are one. More to the point, my son has two mommies and two daddies. For him, it's all he's known, works for him and couldn't be more natural. I've watched with some amusement when he's told strangers that he's going to see his "moms" and they work through that plural noun and decide he misspoke or they misheard.

I cringe at the day when he gets teased for the first time because his family is not like everyone elses. He will one day know the ridicule of those who beleive his family is immoral and not normal. I can see the day when he comes home from school with tears in his eyes and says "Mommy they said you're going to hell because you're with Mama!"

Let me interject here that people are entitled to their religious beliefs, including ones that say being gay is an abomination. If people want to teach their kids to ignore the wide body of scientific evidence for evolution, that the Earth is flat and that the union of two men or women who are devoted and faithful to each other is inherently morally inferior to the union of two cheating and deceitful straight spouses, so be it.

But keep your prejudices out of the public square.

A public school need not and should not cater to religious prejudice, especially when it comes to protecting the children. And that's what the Tango book does. It's a public reality that not every child is raised by one loving mommy and daddy. The public school serves a legitimate public interest when it tries to teach acceptance of families that don't look like your own. As one Loudoun County parent put it in today's WaPo story about the controversy:

There are all types of families. "We happen to be a mom and dad and a boy and a girl," she said. "But sometimes you have a grandmother and a mother, sometimes you have just a dad, sometimes you have two moms or two dads. The important thing is that it's a family of love."

My son is a happy three year old, surrounded by the love of two great moms and two dads who try hard. He's happy with his family situation and will be, until he encounters the bigotry that is pulling the Tango book out of the Loudoun County School, as one day he will. I would like to think he will confront that bigotry in a public environment that teaches respect for differences, not one that sends the message that some kinds of families are shameful and should be censored.

Meanwhile, my partner, who's been away this weekend, comes home this afternoon.

I'm looking for a little penguin love...