Originally appeared March 26, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.
"King & King," a children's book by Dutch authors Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, begins ordinarily enough.
A grouchy queen wants her lazy son to get married - so she decrees that he must find a princess by the end of the summer.
"Very well, Mother," he says. "I must say, though, I've never cared much for princesses."
The prince's young attendant gives a sly wink.
Even so, princesses trot in from every corner of the globe for his inspection. From Texas. From Greenland. From Mumbai. Yet the prince is bored, unhappy. No young lady seems just right.
Then Princess Madeline enters. The young prince perks up. He has found love!
But it is not with the princess. It is with her brother, Prince Lee. Little hearts flow between them on the page. There is handholding, a kiss and a marriage - and of course a happily ever after.
Gay and lesbian couples with young children are already familiar with the lovely "King & King," which debuted a year ago this month (and three years ago in the more progressive Netherlands, which in 2000 approved gay marriage). But Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice was not - and she was appalled.
Price learned about the book from "concerned parents" at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a private school originally founded by philosopher John Dewey as a place of hands-on experience. Every year, the Lab Schools' children think critically about children's books, judging their merits and awarding the Zena Sutherland Award to their favorites. They read books chosen by their librarians and narrow them down to five multicultural, multiracial finalists that represent both genders.
But this year, Trice says in her column, one of the finalists - "King & King" - "has upset some parents who felt that they should have been notified that their parents were reading a book that deals with homosexuality."
Though Trice calls the book "well-conceived," she compares it with other "sexual material" like song lyrics and suggestive clothing. "So at least, in my mind," she says, "that makes this column less about bigotry and narrow-mindedness (although some parents certainly found the content of "King & King" disturbing) than about parents helping kids stay kids in an oversexed society."
Trice, who is African-American, also acknowledges that in years past, some parents would have flipped out over the fact that prince is considering a "mocha-colored" princess from Mombai. "Which emphasizes the fact that the line that governs what's acceptable continues to move for some even though it remains steadfast for others," she says.
Nevertheless, she added, she wouldn't show the book to her own second grader just yet. "When it's time to talk about such things, I may pull the book out," she says. "But I would like to have that choice." Parents should be warned, she says, before being forced to discuss homosexuality or sex with their children.
What Trice is forgetting, of course, is that "King & King" is no more about sex than is any of a hundred other fairy tales, from Disney's beloved Cinderella and Snow White to The Little Mermaid. (Of course, the original, more graphic and gory folktales may, indeed, be about sex, but for the most part we have sanitized them for our children.) "King & King" is about the social rituals and inner attractions of love and partnership.
Even if it were about sex, she is ignoring that no parent is able to choose the timeline for their children's curiosity. No families live in a bubble. Children may ask about sex at three when they see a dog mounting
another dog or when another child mentions something about it on the playground at eight - or they might never ask. When is a parent ever truly ready for their children to grow up?
But most importantly, Trice is forgetting one crucial fact: not only will some children at Lab grow up to be gay themselves, but some children who attend Lab have parents who are lesbian or gay. I don't know where Trice's child goes, but it is likely that her second grader also knows children who come from gay families.
As results continue to come in from the 2000 census, we have recently learned that one-third of the nearly 300,000 lesbian couples and one-fifth of the slightly more than 300,000 male couples who identified themselves as "unmarried partners" are living with children under 18. In conservative states, as many as 40 percent of the lesbian "unmarried partners" are raising children.
In fact, says the Washington Post, "43 percent of unmarried couples living together [including both gay and straight couples] are raising children, nearly matching the 46 percent figure for the nation's married couples. And the trend is climbing for unmarried couples, while it is becoming less and less common for married couples to have children living with them."
The number of children with gay and lesbian parents is rising as more gays and lesbians take the mother (and father) road; and as more and more children of gay parents spread through the school system, straight parents will need to face the reality that their child's best friend may well have two mommies or two daddies.
That means that Dawn Turner Trice and other parents like her need to wake up and smell the lavender. Gay families exist. They are everywhere. And yes, just like all families, they are about love.