Lexington C.A.R.E.S.I have to admit, even today, nearly two weeks after Mr. Parker burst into the news with his dramatic, well-orchestrated arrest at Lexington's Estabrook Elementary School, I am still wrestling with aspects of the event.
Estabrook is our children's school. Celia and I have four children there, and we have been an active, two-mom family in the community for six years.
The book whose "mature subject matter" led to Mr. Parker's objections (and hence his act of civil disobedience and arrest) was "Who's in a Family," a picture book about families washing dogs, dishes, etc., and not sex or sexuality. It is hard to see how this book can be judged "adult themed" unless one thinks the very existence of gay and lesbian-headed families is somehow "obscene". How could it be that a picture of two men or two women engaging in household chores is "adult themed" whereas the same picture of a man and a woman is not?
The book simply reflects the reality of our public schools. We do have many types of families, including gay and lesbian-headed, multi-racial, blended, single-parent, as well as traditional nuclear families, at all our schools.
Books like "That's A Family" are important because our children need to see themselves, and their friends need to see them, in school resources. Children need to be validated, and in the early elementary years a child's family is a child's world. This is true for all children and underpins the schools' long-standing effort to include multi-racial and multi-ethnic families that are part of our school community in their resources.
But as I pondered the book issue last week, a fundamental question arose. If families with gay or lesbian parents are in every school in town, why would a parent think they could control when their child 'ran into' us or our children simply by controlling access to books that include us? Real life would seem to intervene: children play with each other, and parents volunteer for the Big Backyard, in the library, come in for class events.
Then I remembered the superintendent's description that the demands included not only control over access to books but also that "teachers automatically remove or excuse the Parker's child even when discussions about such issues [i.e., same-sex headed families] arise, even if spontaneously." And then the light dawned: it isn't about the books, I realized. It's about creating a "don't ask don't tell" policy for our school, for my kids and our family.
You see, practically speaking, the only way a Lexington school could guarantee that someone's children would be shielded from discussion that included our families would be to silence our children and their friends. Whether through direct requests, or more subtly expressed discomfort, our children and their friends would get the message "do not mention your families." In other words, our children could attend public school, but they would have to leave their family behind, to "check it at the door."
If Mr. Parker's demands were met, the schools would not be simply "drawing a circle" (to use his metaphor) around one child. By making our families a taboo subject, the message would be sent to all our school children that gay people and their families are shameful and to be feared.
It is hard to contemplate saying "yes" to a demand that school resources, indeed school culture, denigrate families like ours, regardless of the sincerity of an objecting parent's attitudes and religious beliefs. The public arena is guided by the state constitution and state law, and public institutions like schools are not appropriately used to promote one particular set of religious values over another in contravention of the equality and dignity of any group of people.
Would we find it acceptable for our schools to hide and silence any other group of families? Bob Jones University, where George Bush spoke during the 2000 election, had a campus ban on interracial dating, justified on Biblical grounds and only abandoned later that year. Suppose a family, whose parents graduated from BJU in 1999, moved to town and were dismayed to find multi-racial families and books that portrayed them to be part of the school community. Would it be right for the schools to exclude multi-racial families from our school conversation and culture, and notify parents when inclusive books were read, because a sincere parent demanded it on the basis of his religious beliefs?
All of us who have sent a child to kindergarten have had fears about how our child will be treated in school. Celia and I too had such fears. We feared that the school would not protect our children from the cruelty that kids can learn from their parents. We feared that they might be the target of shaming behavior that would judge them and hurt them simply because their parents are two women. I am deeply, deeply grateful that Estabrook and the administration of the Lexington schools have tried to make the schools more welcoming for our children, and all children.
Meg Soens is a Lexington resident and mother of four.