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I should know better than to ask "what fresh hell is this?" because something new always pops up.
The only rationale I can see for having a wordsearch option at the end of Pride Puppy (with ordinary words like apple, baseball, coffee cup) is to pretend that this is educational rather than indoctrination. The kids are learning to spell and to identify words, so this is learning English!
I'm inclined to agree with Gorsuch here, a phrase I never thought I'd use: why is this in the English language curriculum rather than the human sexuality curriculum if they need to have it be a Pride parade with lesbians in leather jackets and drag queens and rainbow flags? If they just wanted a spelling book, why have it be a Pride parade? It is about teaching the kids that it's all normal, there are no divergent opinions on this, all that you see there is right and good, and heavens no there would never be anything for adults only in such a parade!
It's only "indoctrination" when you don't agree with the outcome. When I was in elementary school in the '90s. There was plenty of material in reading class that would have been considered indoctrination in a prior era among those of a certain persuasion. A biography of Dr. King comes to mind; why is this being discussed in reading class and not social studies? What about all the other stuff we read that subtly or not so subtly tried to convey the message that it wasn't okay to judge people based on race? What about the story about the girl whose parents met while her father was stationed in Japan? Is this nothing more than indoctrination about interracial relationships and multiculturalism (the story itself was about dating where the dad learned to use chopsticks and the mother learned to eat with a fork, and why they switch between both at home)? For that matter, we also read other stuff about American history in reading class; is the story about a Revolutionary soldier not indoctrination? Shouldn't this be part of social studies class?
The crux of the matter is that the normalization of same-sex relationships is a culture war battle that the right fought and lost, and some of the losers are clinging to the last viable paths of opposition in a desperate attempt to reverse the tide. The problem with these books isn't that they're age-inappropriate due to sexual content, it's that they're presenting same-sex relationships in a manner that isn't sufficiently condemnatory. That the plaintiffs have to resort to bad faith references to leather is proof of this—it's presented in a way to make one think that the book is referring to bondage or gay leather boy culture, when in reality it's a picture of a woman in a leather jacket, which picture would be unobjectionable in a book about anything else.
Yes. And this is why my very tepid and grudging "okay sure civil marriage is already a hot steaming mess, why not let the gays get in on the trauma?" acceptance has cooled even more over the years.
"This will never affect you". "Don't like gay marriage? Then don't get gay married!" "This makes no difference to your life at all, it just means we can marry the people we love".
Well that was a heap of horse manure, even worse - at least you can use manure on your roses. This, on the other hand, has indeed led to "we will fight and die on the hill of having, in the school library for 12 year olds up, a book that mentions in passing 'hey kids, if you can't pay for your cross-sex hormones, peddling your ass is one way of getting money for it'."
Someone invent a time machine so we can go back, because clearly we weren't nearly repressive enough!
A picture not just of a woman, but of a lesbian. At a Pride Parade. Where wearing leather has particular connotations. Seems like there is a lesbian leather subculture out there, and it's not just about "wearing a leather jacket and cheering on the parade". Context is important; a woman in a bikini at the beach is one thing, a woman in a bikini on the beach posing for her glamour shot is quite different in intent and how it is supposed to be read.
I think eventually there may come a split, the 'family-friendly' type of Pride parades will become the norm as the public face of the LGBT+ movement, where there are marchers from everyone including the cops, and floats, and corporate sponsorship, and it is just "waving the pretty coloured flags and cheering". The kinky elements, the overtly sexual ones, the remains of the original Pride, will go their own way or have their own separate areas where it's understood you don't bring the baby stroller or the four year olds or the normies.
Ultimately all that is for the movement to sort out for itself. Am I saying "no leather at Pride"? No. Am I saying there shouldn't be kink and it should all be family-friendly? No, because it's none of my business. If parents want to bring their kids to the parade, with the attendant risk of them seeing something they maybe shouldn't, that's on the parents because it's their job to raise their kids.
Which means that there are also parents who don't and won't bring their kids to the parade, even the family-friendly version, and that is their right too, because it is their job as to how they raise their kids. So why the necessity to have books like Pride Puppy in schools? That's going beyond tolerance and into "we're making all this normal, including the bits that go over the heads of the kids but which adults recognise, and you can't stop us or do anything about it".
You want to teach four year olds not to be bullies and not to pick on other kids or adults just for being different? Knock yourself out. You want to slip in the idea of leather dykes to four year olds and a different kind of Pride puppy? Yeah, no. They can wait till they're fourteen. Or sixteen. Or never, to find out about that.
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