How My LGBTQ Kids’ Book Ended Up at the U.S. Supreme Court
I’ve been attending Pride marches across Canada since I was a teenager in the late 1980s—in big cities, small towns and even smaller Gulf Island communities. In the 1990s, my parents marched in Toronto’s Pride Parade with PFLAG. And when my partner and I became parents, Pride became a fun day out for our whole family: we’d meet up with grandparents, spend time with friends, join the parade, buy snacks from food trucks and listen to music in a local park. Over the past decade, my parents, my partner and I have worked with the nonprofit Rainbow Refugee to sponsor LGBTQ+ individuals fleeing persecution. Celebrating their first Pride events in Canada with them and seeing their happiness as they witness the community’s support after years of hiding has deepened my own commitment to queer visibility.
For me, being at Pride is a joyful experience: it’s about communities coming together to celebrate everyone’s right to be who they are and love who they choose. For the kids who attend, it’s a chance to see that LGBTQ+ people and families exist and are loved and supported by many, many people. That wasn’t something I saw growing up in the ’70s and ’80s. And although the LGBTQ+ community was more visible by the time I became a parent, there were still only a handful of picture books about families with two moms. I wanted to write books that would fill that gap.
Twenty years ago, on parental leave from my job as a crisis counsellor, I started writing. Since then, I’ve authored more than 30 books of fiction and non-fiction for young readers, many of which include LGBTQ+ characters or are about queer history and rights. In 2021, I released Pride Puppy, an alphabet book that follows a family as they attend a Pride Day celebration and temporarily lose their dog in the parade. It’s illustrated by Julie McLaughlin and published by Orca Books. All of us—author, illustrator, publisher—are from Vancouver Island, B.C.
Pride Puppy was well-received, appearing on best books lists in B.C. and Ontario, and nominated for a reader’s choice award in Saskatchewan. More importantly, it found its way to families who loved it. I heard from parents delighted to find a book that showed people who looked like those in their own family and community. Many of them said it was their child’s favourite book.
Then, near the end of 2022, I suddenly started getting hateful messages filled with homophobic slurs, violent language and vile accusations—and then death threats. Because the threats were coming from the U.S., I reported them to the FBI, who investigated. After searching online, I learned that my book was one of several LGBTQ+ picture books selected by a school board in Montgomery County Maryland, as part of an effort to build an inclusive curriculum that reflected the families in their diverse community. Apparently, some parents were protesting—and Fox News had picked up the story. It was a stressful situation, but I had no idea how much worse it was going to get.
By the spring of 2023, the parents—three couples, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a group that has previously litigated and supported cases that have undermined LGBTQ+ rights—had filed a lawsuit against the school district. They were demanding to be warned in advance of any occasions where the books would be used, and they wanted to be able to opt their children out. The group, which includes Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents, claimed that mere exposure to books that included LGBTQ+ characters violated their religious freedom.
I wasn’t entirely surprised: the case represents a form of censorship that closely parallels traditional book banning, especially in the context of LGBTQ+ content. Many of my other titles had also been challenged by right-wing groups. That same spring, my previous board book, Pride Colors, was one of more than a hundred targeted by a group of book banners in Virginia. PEN America has now tracked more than 16,000 book bans in public schools since 2021—a number they note has not been reached since the Red Scare of the 1950s McCarthy era. The titles most frequently banned are those aimed at teens and adults, but when it comes to picture books, the primary targets are those with LGBTQ+ characters.
Over the next two years, the lawsuit worked its way up through the courts, with a federal court and an appeals court both finding in favour of the school district. In January this year, the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case, which is now known as Mahmoud v. Taylor. Pride Puppy was one of nine picture books cited in the suit.
My heart sank when I heard the news. In the midst of an epidemic of book bans, I worried about the potential for the case to limit student access to LGBTQ+ books. I was also concerned about the possible broader harm to public education in the United States. On a personal level, I dreaded the escalation of the online hate I’d been dealing with for the past two years. Mischaracterizations of our book had grown and spread, amplified by far-right media.
Much of the misinformation centered on the illustrations, taking items out of context, and writing about them in a way that falsely implied sexualized content—a common tactic of book banners. One Catholic news source, for example, wrote that the book introduced children to words like leather and zipper. The leather item in the book is a jacket worn by one child’s mom—it appears on the L page, along with pictures of a lion, a lollipop, a loudspeaker, lemonade and a ladybug. The zipper is on the Z page, and is part of a kid’s sweater.
Some of the misinformation departed even further from reality, becoming increasingly absurd—but nothing gets clicks like outrage, and soon far-right media was calling the book pornographic and sexually explicit. Watching these lies be repeated and believed has been bizarre, infuriating and scary. It has also given me a new understanding of how quickly misinformation takes hold online, how lies are weaponized to fuel hate and how dangerous this can be.
Still, I expected better from the U.S. Supreme Court. The nine picture books cited in the case were very short. Surely the justices would just read the actual stories and see for themselves.
On April 22, the case was finally heard: my Canadian alphabet book was in the U.S. Supreme Court. It all seemed so unlikely—but there I was, sitting in my living room with my partner, listening to a livestream of the oral arguments.
As the justices posed questions to the lawyers, I became increasingly anxious. If parents were given the right to opt their children out of books that might contradict their religious beliefs, that could apply to speech as well. The justices discussed whether an opt-out policy would prevent a gay teacher from mentioning their wedding, or prohibit people using a transgender child’s pronouns. Some of the justices seemed to argue that any mention of LGBTQ+ people at all might violate other people’s religious rights. You didn’t have to be a lawyer to realize that the conservative majority on the court had already made up their minds about the case.
Then, Justice Neil Gorsuch brought up Pride Puppy—and said it contained images of bondage, leather and sex workers. I almost fell off the couch. He claimed to have read the book, and it was hard to imagine that a Supreme Court justice would lie in court—but could he really believe a picture of a mom wearing a leather jacket was actually a sex worker with an interest in bondage? Or was he confused by the dog being on a leash? Nothing about it made sense, but sitting in my living room listening to them talk about my book in this way felt utterly surreal.
There is nothing in these illustrations that is remotely inappropriate for young kids. When I’ve read Pride Puppy to kids, they usually want to tell me about their own dogs’ names, or about a time they fell over, like the kid in the book. They like it when the puppy makes a mess, and when the dog and family are reunited. But some people object to LGBTQ+ people and families being in books at all—and rather than admit that, they misrepresent books like mine.
Over the days following the SCOTUS hearing, Justice Gorsuch’s false information was quickly picked up by the far-right. Fox News amplified it further, hosting book ban proponents like Moms 4 Liberty who expressed horror at the (imaginary) content of our book. I tried to focus on the many supportive messages from those who loved Pride Puppy, and I celebrated the spring launch of my new picture book—A Hug on the Wind, a sweet story about a child worried about missing his grandmother when she heads south for the winter.
SCOTUS will make its ruling by the end of June. Throughout history, there have been many topics parents have objected to on religious grounds: Divorce. Evolution. Women having careers. Interfaith marriage. Magic. Pacifism. The list of potential objections is endless—and if teachers have to allow students to opt out of every potential objectionable topic, it is hard to imagine how public schools could function.
Here in Canada, we are not immune to the influence of our neighbours to the south. Over the last few years, an anti-LGBTQ+ movement has been taking hold here as well. Luckily, Canada has a long-standing legal precedent around the issue of LGBTQ+ books in schools. More than two decades ago, in Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36, our Supreme Court ruled that the local school board could not impose its religious values and ban LGBTQ+ picture books. "Tolerance is always age-appropriate,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote. “Children cannot learn unless they are exposed to views that differ from those they are taught at home.”
All our children, regardless of their family’s religious faith or views—and regardless of their connection to the LGBTQ+ community—attend public schools together. Their schools have a responsibility to make sure that they all feel seen, supported and welcome. It is not reasonable to expect public school teachers to be complicit in hiding the existence of an entire group of people. And there is no way for a school to make LGBTQ+ students and families invisible without doing tremendous harm to all their students.
Children are not harmed by inclusive picture books. They are harmed by shame, and by invisibility, and by the idea that their families are too controversial to be acknowledged. It’s not books children need protection from—it’s hate and discrimination.
I know most Canadians oppose book bans and want our public schools to be safe, welcoming and inclusive. So, as we watch what is happening in the United States, I hope that we will continue to speak up for the freedom to read. For the right of every child to see themselves in a story. And for the belief that books—especially those filled with joy and love—should be shared, not hidden.
