King and King

[Faithless]

At issue: Is the homosexual agenda infiltrating the school system?

(It's interesting how the homophobes think. :rolleyes: )

Knight Says Parents Must Check Children's Books Mating 'King and King' (http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/192004a.asp)
Warns Against Letting Homosexual Agenda Infiltrate Schools Through Kid's Literature

(AgapePress) - A pro-family leader says parents in Wilmington, North Carolina, need to "raise Cain" about a controversial book in an elementary school library.

At issue is a book in the library of Freeman Elementary School called King and King (Tricycle Press, 2002). It is about a prince who spurns a number of eligible princesses before falling for another prince. The illustrated children's story ends with the two men marrying and sharing a kiss. (See Earlier Story)

Bob Knight with the Culture and Family Institute feels people should not be surprised to find embedded in school libraries books like King and King, which he says are designed to confuse children and make them think homosexuality is a good thing.

"Parents should understand that homosexual activists are very serious about taking over schools and indoctrinating children into the idea that homosexuality is normal and healthy, and that anyone who says otherwise is a narrow-minded bigot," Knight says, noting that the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has conducted seminars promoting the teaching of homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten age.

The pro-family leader contends that parents and educators need to be more vigilant about the selection of school literature, and that children's books published by Tricycle Press should be subjected to special scrutiny. He says any publisher that puts out a children's book promoting homosexuality is pursuing a political agenda.

In general, Knight believes people need to pay more attention to how the homosexual agenda creeps into the educational system. "This should be a wakeup call to parents all across America who think 'It can't happen in my school.' Well it can -- and it can happen in very subtle ways, like books being introduced into the school library without parents or even teachers knowing they're there and kids stumbling upon them," he says.

Parents must be pro-active, the Culture and Family Institute spokesman contends, and forceful in spite of those who criticize their efforts. "I think parents need to take more interest in who's running the school, who's selecting the books," he says, "and they shouldn't be deterred by charges by the People for the American Way and the ACLU that they're somehow interfering with education and freedom of speech."

According to Knight, parents must get involved in determining the content to which their children are exposed because nobody has the best interests of their children at heart like they do. He says in the case of King and King, concerned parents need to take another parent or two with them to the school and then inquire how such a book was selected for their children's school.

http://www.agapepress.org/kingandking.jpg

[Iconoclastic]

it's interesting how they never mention heterosexual agendas infiltrating schools

[Faithless]

Nijland also says that when the book came out two years ago, hardly anyone paid attention, but now word is spreading fast in Europe over the controversy of its contents.

"It's a funny story, nothing more," Nijland remarks.

Nijland says she simply wanted to tell what she calls a modern-day fairy tale. Turns out, not everyone who reads it is "happily ever after."

(And what's so wrong with that?)

Co-author of controversial children's book speaks out (http://www.wect.com/Global/story.asp?S=1724450&nav=2gQcLfeJ)
The uproar over an elementary school library book in Wilmington is now international.

The co-author of the book says she never intended it as an endorsement of homosexuality. She told us that the controversy here is now the talk of T.V. at her home in the Netherlands.

Stern Nijland is co-author of King and King, a children's storybook about two men in love. Nijland says, with broken English, the attention the book is getting is bizarre. "It's a happy story - it's just two princes - that's it", Nijland told News Six in a telephone interview from the Netherlands. "We thought it was funny - too bizarre for words actually. Here this kind of thing is normal. It is sad this discussion is apparently still necessary."

The controversy began when Michael and Tonya Hartsell's 7-year-old daughter brought home King and King from Rachel Freeman Elementary School. They were outraged that a story about two men marrying each other was available at their child's school library.

Nijland says it's the uproar, not the book, that's doing the damage. "I think it is sad for a little girl to know of now harm and she just wants to read nice books," Nijland said in her broken English. "It is sad she is learning this so early... taboos."

Nijland also says that when the book came out two years ago, hardly anyone paid attention, but now word is spreading fast in Europe over the controversy of its contents.

"It's a funny story, nothing more," Nijland remarks.

Nijland says she simply wanted to tell what she calls a modern-day fairy tale. Turns out, not everyone who reads it is "happily ever after."

[rice cracker]

OMG. Teaching children that stories depicting homosexuals as normal is a bad thing and that being gay really is unacceptable. Great. I wonder how children with gay parents will be affected by moves like this.

[Faithless]

OMG. Teaching children that stories depicting homosexuals as normal is a bad thing and that being gay really is unacceptable. Great. I wonder how children with gay parents will be affected by moves like this.
Ha!

The controversy behind a "King and King" type story should be old since before that there was "Heather has two mommies"

The History of Heather (http://www.alyson.com/html/00_files/00_ednote/0400/0400heather10_03_int.html)

[>:^|]

I'm actually thinking I wanna buy this book now. :smile:

The problem with so much of the "diversity" literature for kids is that so often the ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. is portrayed as the problem. I used to try to buy books for my nieces and nephews all the time, but I had a hard time finding any I liked. The Asian (black, latino, with gay parents, whatever) children often aren't portrayed just as kids. The "difference" has to be front and center.

[Faithless]

I'd buy it.

I've looked around half heartedly for "Heather...", because I think it is important for my kids to be aware of these things and not think it's wierd.

Just the other day, my know-it-all 7 year old was telling us she thought it was wierd for gays/lesbians to marry each other. I think her friends or after school teachers might have suggested this.

My wife and I had to educate our kid that there aint nothing wrong with it.

That was a fun little argument to have with her little mind.

Now to tell her after school teachers to keep their opinions to themselves!!!

[Iconoclastic]

I'm actually thinking I wanna buy this book now. :smile:

The problem with so much of the "diversity" literature for kids is that so often the ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. is portrayed as the problem. I used to try to buy books for my nieces and nephews all the time, but I had a hard time finding any I liked. The Asian (black, latino, with gay parents, whatever) children often aren't portrayed just as kids. The "difference" has to be front and center.

That in itself is a tool of racism. Don't think that just because there is diversity that it goes toward racial understanding. Pointing out its differentness will only divide and not unite. It's like how calling Chinese Checkers that and European Checkers simply Checkers is racist. It points out the foreignness of anything Chinese and normalizes anything European by doing away with the prefix.

[Faithless]

Well, I'm hoping that pointing out the problem with differences will help kids understand the plight there-in.

Most young kids, as we all know, are pretty open to differences. So, it's good to reinforce this openness and help them understand that there are people that are not so open to it all.

[Faithless]

At issue, now: Children's books with homosexual themes to be considered "adult" literature and to be taken-out of the Children's book sections of libraries in some southern states to be placed in the adult section, instead. :rolleyes:

Books possibly affected: King and King; Heather Has Two Mommies.

Southern States Battling Gay Books (http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/05/27/opinion/86opbarnes.txt)

By Steve Barnes * Special To The Morning News * 2005/05/27

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Only a few days ago was the General Assembly of Arkansas gaveled to adjournment sine die. Be glad. There is in the air a political virus, a virulent strain, concentrated (for now) south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and it is contagious. It has been diagnosed here, where the Bayou State's legislature is very much in session.

The most outsized symptom was observed last year, when Louisiana joined a dozen other states, Arkansas included, in approving by lopsided margins referenda declaring a certain segment of the population to be less than complete citizens and, by extension, less than human. The latest manifestation is a kind of literary flu, with the chills of Fahrenheit 451 accompanied by the fever of Fahrenheit 9/11.

The book is "King and King," and it has nothing to do with Huey Long. It is the first "Heather Has Two Mommies" of the millennium. "King and King" is a picture book, illustrated (though not in the least graphically) and written for youngsters, about two princes who meet and marry. A conflagration was guaranteed. Venue -- a public library, in Slidell -- and subject matter -- homosexuality, almost an abstract in the book -- were tinder and spark. A parent began smoldering and now up has flamed State Rep. A.G. Crowe, who would abolish the "age-appropriate" classification of Louisiana libraries and restrict any book involving "human sexuality" -- a fairly broad definition -- to adults. By not burning inconvenient material, a la Truffaut, but burying it, as Moore, Crowe says that he is "not espousing censorship." The distinction without a difference would amuse the Kingfish. It appalls librarians.

Louisiana is the fourth state in recent weeks to consider official disapproval of books involving homosexuality and sanctions against public libraries that do not shelve them in keeping with the political climate. An appropriations subcommittee of the Oklahoma legislature has threatened to withhold more than $800,000 in aid to local libraries if they do not adopt a policy virtually identical to the proposal now pending here.

But the top prize goes to Alabama, or would have had not sufficient of his colleagues realized how much damage State Rep. Gerald Allen was doing to their state's already tenuous reputation. Appalled by the "gay agenda," Allen asked the 'Bama legislature to go through each tax-supported library -- every one: public, elementary, middle, high school, university, medical school -- and rip from their stacks not only any volumes about homosexuality but any written by a homosexual. That would, Allen acknowledged, include getting rid of some of that fellow Shakespeare.

Now a township book brouhaha in North Carolina has inspired one of its U.S. representatives to involve the federal government in local library acquisitions. The bill is styled as a Parental Empowerment Act. Without it, one would suppose, parents are powerless.

There was broad bi-partisan support aplenty for some if not all these bills, as could have been expected had one been introduced in the Arkansas legislature -- or, say, should one be, in 2007. Still one cannot help but note that the authors, state or federal, of these hot button bills are all Republicans. That reality says nothing about the merits of any books involved, less about the ability of youngsters to handle the subject matter, little about the issue of parental rights or responsibilities and altogether too much about the condition of Republicanism today. Assume for a moment that some members of the Grand Old Party are merely doing a little grandstanding, a practice with which Democrats have some experience. The problem is that, no matter the issue, the most zealous fans are liable to leap from the grandstands and onto the playing field, altering the "game," never for the better.

Set aside, for a moment, the fresh anguish these controversies have brought to a group of Americans already stigmatized as unworthy of respect; ignore, also, the resolve among them for full equality that the disputes will without a doubt strengthen. Consider instead that too many of us are embracing old myths, chief among them that what we most treasure, our children, are endangered by whatever we most loathe simply by reading about it. We ought to know better. They do. And some of them are winking at one another. About us.

Summer is near, and already West Nile is back, here and in Arkansas. We ought to be concerned about both it and the other, political virus, instead of trying to immunize ourselves against something that simply isn't contagious.

It's interesting what is acceptable literature for kids and what is not. So, some places want homosexuality taken out, but books on rape, and other violence are A-OK. :rolleyes:

Book to remain in Fargo classroom (http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2005/06/19/news/state/sta03.txt)

BY Associated Press

FARGO -- A Fargo Public Schools committee has upheld a decision not to ban John Grisham's novel, "A Time to Kill," from an accelerated English course at a high school here.

A Fargo North High committee made the decision last month to keep the book in class. The parent who first asked that the book be removed appealed that decision to the district level.

"It's a continuing trend of very bad decision-making at the district level," Pamela Sund Herschlip said of the latest decision. "It's also a question of age-appropriateness. It's not an issue of banning books. It's an issue of placement of material."

Grisham's best-selling novel tells the story of a small-town Mississippi lawyer who defends a black man after he shoots two white men who raped his young daughter. The book describes a rape scene.

"It was our belief that the novel could be used to teach tolerance against discrimination, the judicial system and prejudices," said North Principal Andy Dahlen.

The district review committee said the novel's graphic scenes served a purpose and were not sensational.

Sund Herschlip said she plans to appeal the decision to Fargo Public Schools Superintendent David Flowers. If Flowers upholds the ruling, Sund Herschlip can appeal to the Fargo School Board, which would give a final recommendation.