March 7, Rockfish, VA: Principals and librarians in the Rockfish public school system have announced their decision to ban the controversial new children’s book, Heather Has Two Parents.
Ostensibly written to help pre-school and kindergarten students foster a more tolerant attitude toward children who live with both their biological mother and father, the picture book has set off a firestorm of controversy since its publication last year. In the past months, school teachers, librarians, and civil rights attorneys have all weighed in about the dangers of exposing the government’s youngest students to what has been called a “perilous” message.
“Frankly, the notion is offensive to most adults and can be highly upsetting to young children,” claims school librarian Stephanie Helms in a statement released earlier today.
According to Helms’ statement, “Children who are kindergarten aged and younger have enough pressure to deal with already without this book adding to their inherent identity confusion. ‘Am I homosexual? How does a condom work? Isn’t meat really murder? How bad should I feel about the Vietnam war?’ I cannot imagine burdening them with the disquieting and, frankly, unrealistic idea of a child who lives with a married mother and father.”
Child psychologist Dr. Marion Bloom, who works with the school district as a consultant, explained why Heather could be a real problem for kids.
“Unattached parents, multi-blended families, trans-sexual and trans-gender parents, children living in a refrigerator box and foraging for scraps of food: this is the world young children understand and it is very comfortable to them. Many of them began life in a test tube and many more of them are fully wards of the state by preschool. Letting them read a book that depicts a married couple having breakfast with their daughter—with all of them dressed in their pajamas no less—it’s frankly going to make my job harder. There will be a lot of questions.” she said.
The author and illustrator of Heather Has Two Parents, Alicia Brown, could not be reached for comment by press time and reportedly has been in seclusion since January.
“Tolerance has to have its limits when it comes to the welfare of children,” says Bloom. “It is bad enough to expose six-year-olds to the concept of a basically insoluble relationship between two members of the opposite sex, but on page nine there is a drawing of ‘Daddy’ serving ‘Heather’ pre-sweetened cereal. I mean—honestly.”
“Besides,” added Bloom, “real life Mommy and Daddy were always yelling.”
[The preceding article is tagged and intended as satire]
