(c) 2025 Julie McLaughlin, used with permission. Characters from the picture book Pride Puppy! by Robin Stevenson and Julie McLaughlin smile in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, pulling a wavy-striped wagon full of the nine picture books named in Mahmoud v. Taylor.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Mombian: “Author Responds to Misrepresentation” (on Love, Violet)
PEN America: “Authors Speak Up About Their Books Being Misrepresented“
The Hill: “Authors in Supreme Court LGBTQ+ Books Case Detail ‘Surreal’ Fight“
Maclean’s, Robin Stevenson: “How My LGBTQ Kids’ Book Ended Up at the U.S. Supreme Court“
Erasing the Innocence of Queer Childhood (and Families)
It is bizarre to have my picture book about childhood experiences described as obscene adult material in the court files of Mahmoud v. Taylor, a landmark case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court on April 22, 2025. But not unexpected.
Relgious families have sued Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) for the right to excuse their children from books or conversations that include LGBTQ+ people. This case could upend public schools’ ability to include content any family objects to for religious reasons.
The case names nine LGBTQ+ picture books, including Love, Violet, and describes them in ways that sound oddly similar to the hate mail I’ve received (sans slurs and the ALL CAPS). Our books are carefully designed for small children. Yet one would not guess that based on the Reply Brief for Petitioners. They suggest MCPS’s legal argument for including our books means the district would also allow classes on “porn literacy,” “sex play with friends,” nudity, and even “simulated sexual acts” in elementary classrooms (p. 7).
WHAT?! NO.
These words are designed to shock. I regret to reprint them here. They do not reflect any reality in any public school. Nor the innocent content of our books. Read them for yourself and see! (Violet story time.)
(c) Julie McLaughlin, From What Would Julie Draw, refuting mischaracterizations of Pride Puppy! by Robin Stevenson, 2021
Regarding Love, Violet, the petitioners cherry pick a phrase from when Violet is being teased. The brief implies her blush is sexual–an intentional mis-reading that invents an adult layer not present in a story about a seven-year-old child.
Imposing any sexual meaning on anything about a child is a violation. This isn’t just dishonest. It erases the innocence of LGBTQ+ childhood and family life. It suggests that no matter our actions, LGBTQ+ people are never innocent. It perpetuates a harmful stereotype used to oppress us. Hence the hate mail.
Graphic created by Julie McLaughlin to compare misrepresentations of Love, Violet in Mahmoud v. Taylor with the actual spread, (c) 2022 Charlene Chua, Love, Violet, FSG. Used with permission.
This tactic is an old and effective one. It obliterates our humanity–and the innocence of queer childhood and families–with scary images. It’s how people justify erasing us.
Dana Rudolph in the Mombian blog highlights the history of this stereotype that has been used to justify censorship for generations and discusses the Love, Violet example.
Mombian: “Author Responds to Misrepresentation of Book in U.S. Supreme Court Case.” Purple background with shadow of SCOTUS building, the cover of the picture book Love, Violet, rainbow strip footer with Mombian logo. “Read more at Mombian.com”
Reality check, please!
Here is a picture of me from around the age of my first crush on a girl in pre-K. It consisted of amazement that she was so wonderful, and going speechless in her presence. That’s it. My brother had a crush on a girl at about the same age. We’ve laughed about the similarities of our sweetly-innocent experiences. Why should his crush be cute and mine be—to quote one hate message sans the CAPS–“all about sex”? It isn’t logical. Orientation, gender, and biological sex have nothing to do with actions. They are part of our identities–at every age.
Young picture of me in blonde pigtales and green yarn bows, with a green dress. My smiling mouth is open wide as though speaking.
In the early days of the lawsuit, I confess even I was shocked at the petitioners’ and media’s descriptions of the vibrant alphabet book Pride Puppy!. And I know better.
Then reader, I read the book.
Always read the book before you judge it. Ours are short!
I read it twice in a row, studied every image. This was the sweetest story! How had they pretended it was anything else? Yet now nearly every article about this case repeats a handful of objects from the appendix, rearranged, to suggest something “salacious” that isn’t there. I checked! Illustrator Julie McLaughlin shatters this slander by simply sharing images of this adorable book. Author Robin Stevenson was deluged with hate mail and death threats based on a mischaracterization of her work. Meanwhile, children are missing out on this educational book.
(c) 2021 Julie McLaughlin, Pride Puppy! Cover of a crowd of diverse people in rainbow clothes, with Pride flags marching together, led by a child and puppy. The title is in rainbow colors.
Many of our books have been mischaracterized this way.
How Do We Respond to Lies?
These lies come from bias against LGBTQ+ people as a group. There is no way around it–this is more than disagreeing. Otherwise, a lawsuit like this would also object to books with characters of other religions or worldviews, too. This objection is to people of certain innate identities. The objection is that in our books, LGBTQ+ are allowed to exist without being punished or reduced to unequal gendered roles. This bias is about upholding inequality based on one aspect of our identities. (That’s another essay for another day–but worth thinking about.)
Denying the innocence and youth of LGBTQ+ children and family members denies our full humanity. It says: Only our categories matter–not our humanness. But everyone one of our books celebrates the complexity of our identities–that we are never just one thing. In contrast, smearing LGBTQ+ pepole as a group, denying the innocence of LGBTQ+ children says: It’s okay to judge, persecute, and erase people based on prejudices about identity categories.
That erasure is not just immoral, it puts children in danger. But our books show children they are not alone. They let classmates see each other as just that–classmates, fellow humans, with similar hopes and fears. Restricting our books, even for some, rejects the idea of kindness for everyone.
The next time you hear of any book being described as “dangerous,” consider what the accusation also says about real children, real people, and their right to live and learn and read. Speak up! Defend books! Defend our shared humanity! Defend the innocence of LGBTQ+ childhood and families!
Inclusive books are the solution to prejudice and bias!
(c) 2025 Andy Passchier, characters from What Are Your Words, by Katherine Locke, holding up signs in front of the Supreme Court building. The signs and clouds read: “Defend the right to read,” “Supreme Court,” “Protect our words!,” “Let us read!”
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Spot and call out dangerous myths used to justify injustice:
- LIE: Anything about LGBTQ+ people is about sex.
- LIE: LGBTQ+ people are never children or innocent
- LIE: Queerness is an “ideology” or “lifestyle” – not innate
- LIE: LGBTQ+ stories are part of a “Marxist plot” to destroy familes.
(Hmm – Many of the challenged books celebrate the love of families. Do only some families count? Does gender matter more than actions?)
Then support inclusive books! Social Action Toolkit
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