‘King & King’ Dragged into California’s Proposition 8 Vote
By Wendy Werris -- Publishers Weekly,10/28/2008
Eight years after its original Dutch publication, controversy continues to swirl around King & King, a picture book by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland about gay marriage that has become embroiled in the outcome of California’s Proposition 8. The proposition seeks to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in the state, following a California Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that held such marriages were valid under the state’s constitution. Backers of the proposition are running commentary about the “immoral” message in the book in television and radio ads in California.
Nicole Geiger, founder of Tricycle Press, bought the book at the Bologna Book Fair in 2001 and published the American edition the next year. Geiger said she was “devastated” when she found out that King & King is now being cited by backers of Proposition 8 as an example of the type of books that will be used to negatively influence the lifestyle of children. “I immediately sent a personal donation to the ‘No on 8’ campaign in the hope that people will delve a little deeper into this civil rights issue than a TV or radio commercial,” she said. Sales of the book, which has sold 18,000 copies since it was published, have been above average during October. “I’m terribly proud of King & King,” Geiger said, “and saddened by any association with this innocent children’s book by politically motivated attacks on the civil rights of fellow Americans.”
Tricycle Press has been deluged with both complaints and praise for the book since it was published. Politically conservative detractors claim the book isn’t appropriate for children, while groups such as the Lambda Literary Foundation and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression have supported King & King. Referring to the book, ABFFE president Chris Finan said, “It’s First Amendment-protected, and they can’t go pulling books out of the school library just because some parents are offended by the material.”
The first public squabble about King & King took place in Wilmington, N.C., in 2004, when a first-grader brought the book home from her school library and showed it to her parents, Michael and Tonya Hartsell. The couple so objected to the book’s acknowledgement of homosexuality that they threatened to enroll their daughter in a different school and refused to return the book to the Freeman school library. The Hartsells took their complaint to the national media, and received coverage through AP, CNN and ABC. The result: a committee of parents, teachers and citizens of New Hanover County met and decided that the book would remain at Rachel Freeman Elementary School, but moved to a location only available for parents to check out.
In 2007 King & King was the focus of a lawsuit by two Massachusetts couples who sued the school system after their children’s teacher read the book aloud to her students in Lexington. Robb and Robin Wirthlin and David and Tonia Parker filed a federal lawsuit against the school district of Estabrook Elementary School, claiming that using the book in school constituted sexual education without parental notification. Appearing on CNN, Robin Wirthlin said, "We felt like seven years old is not appropriate to introduce homosexual themes" and "My problem is that this issue of romantic attraction between two men is being presented to my seven-year-old as wonderful, and good and the way things should be." The judge dismissed the lawsuit, writing, "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation."
Protectchildren.com, the most prominent Web supporter of Proposition 8, includes a video of an interview with the Wirthlins and directly addresses California voters. The couple describes their revelation about King & King after their son informed them of it, and voices grave concerns over the consequences of homosexual marriage. In the video the interviewer, expressing alarm, confirms, “This book was actually being read by the teacher in class!” The cover and a few pages of King & King are shown during the interview, which is being aired frequently in California.
On October 23 the Los Angeles Times reported that while most voters reject a ban on gay marriage, the margin on Proposition 8 is closing. According to the Public Policy Institute of California the final tally is hard to predict.
Post a comment Return to article View other article discussions
| Submitted by: | Constance Lombardo 10/31/2008 6:32:50 AM PT |
| Location: | Asheville, NC |
| Occupation: | writer |
My five year old daughter and I love this very sweet book. It's about as inappropriate as any Disney book about princesses dreaming of being saved by a prince. Schools should celebrate diversity as part of our American heritage. It isn't "advocating" anything; it merely presents the fact that everybody is different! This is a fact of life. People who want to suppress reality, and the rights of those different from them, should stop trying to force their prejudice on others!
| Submitted by: | WENDY WERRIS 10/30/2008 4:37:18 PM PT |
| Location: | Los Angeles |
Author's note: a previous version of this article incorrectly characterized
the nature of Proposition 8.
| Submitted by: | S B 10/29/2008 2:11:22 PM PT |
| Location: | anywhere, US |
| Occupation: | - |
It is absolutely inappropriate to introduce gay marriage to five-year old children. If an individual parent chooses to do so, that's their decision. But why must the public school system become a propaganda tool for the gay movement? As a parent, I send my child to school to learn about reading and arithmetic.
If parents are forced to pay taxes for an educational system that they do not feel comfortable using, support for that system will quickly diminish.
| Submitted by: | Mark 10/28/2008 8:05:23 PM PT |
| Location: | CA |
Censorship of comments.
I just posted a comment about factual errors.
Unfortunately I was unable to post until I turned every mention of s-e-x into "s3x" because it's too much like spam or expletives!
Oh yeah...and I had to put dashes in it this time to get it past the filter.
Has hell frozen over?
Publishers censoring the word s-e-x???
| Submitted by: | Mark 10/28/2008 8:01:35 PM PT |
| Location: | CA |
Shame on you for not doing your research.
Prop 8 is not about reversing a constitutional amendment making same-s3x marriage legal. It is itself a constitutional amendment that would explicitly remove the right for same-s3x couples to marry. The prop is a response to a CA supreme court ruling that the statute enacted by Prop 22 (defining marriage as between 1 man & 1 woman) violated the CA constitution. Such a ruling does not constitute a constitutional amendment. Please get your facts straight. CA has an equal protection clause in its constitution. The supreme court said denying same-s3x couples the same rights as heteros3xual couples violates this equal protection. Prop 8 is an attempt to supersede the equal protection clause by amending the constitution to explicitly deny same-s3x couples the right to marry.
Also, it was a glaring omission to not mention the role the Mormon church has played in the support of Prop 8. Last summer, the First Presidency (think Pope) of the LDS church sent a letter to all Mormon churches urging all Mormons to donate time and money in support of prop 8. Then, this past September, when polls indicated that prop 8 would be defeated, he and other Mormon leaders sent videos to their churches imploring members to get even more involved. After this, donations from Mormons shot up and to date have accounted for at least 40% of all money to prop 8 and possibly more than 70% of all donations from individuals in support of the proposition. This church involvement in politics is unprecedented and dangerous.
You also failed to mention that the Wirthlin parents (a Mass. couple who have been involved in extensive, misleading, scaremongering in advertising in support of prop 8 in CA) are Mormons themselves. They want to scare parents into thinking their 7 year-old children are going to be brainwashed into being gay. Aside from the absurdity of that notion in concept, you ignored the fact that CA has a law on the books that MA does not that allows parents to choose to have their children sit out of classes that teach about health and family. MA does not have such a law. Also, if you ask anyone who has been in the CA public school system in recent years (or authorities in CA education) you'll find out that there's no teaching of marriage at all required by the state and that it doesn't happen in practice either.
Please get your facts straight. Less than 5 minutes on wikipedia could have prevented such errors.
| Submitted by: | Reginald Gates 10/28/2008 7:40:55 PM PT |
| Location: | California |
| Occupation: | Retired |
"Backers of the proposition are fighting to reverse the constitutional amendment that made gay marriage legal this year in the state," - huh?
This statement is an out and out factual error and invalidates the rest of the article - if you can't get the basics right, why should your readers trust you on anything else?
There was no Amendment that "made gay marriage legal" - rather, a 4-3 court decision set aside a vote of the people (Proposition 22) that said marriage should be between a man and a woman. The current Proposition would make this definition part of the State Constitution so that the courts could not override it.
You may disagree with Proposition 8, but at least get the facts straight.
| Submitted by: | Ken V (kenv463@gmail.com) 10/28/2008 4:58:20 PM PT |
| Location: | California |
I think parents just want to discuss those issues with their children themselves rather than having them learn about it at school. I can understand that.
| Submitted by: | JoHanna White (faerieceilidh@hotmail.com) 10/28/2008 1:00:12 PM PT |
| Location: | Vacaville, CA |
| Occupation: | administrator |
I've read this book to my three year old and she loves it. There's nothing innappropriate in it. it's about love!
| Submitted by: | Patrick Meighan (patsburgh@yahoo.com) 10/28/2008 11:55:40 AM PT |
| Location: | Culver City, CA |
| Occupation: | Writer |
We read "King & King" out loud in my church a couple Sundays back, to children as young as 3 (my daughter's age... she was there).
It's a wonderful book that demonstrates that love and companionship can be found in all different places, including where you least expect it.
If it ain't your cup of tea, that's fine, but there's a whole church full of folks out here in Santa Monica, CA, who found King & King to be a funny and charming fairy tale, appropriate for every age.
Oh, p.s., vote no on Prop 8!
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Post a comment Return to article View other article discussions
