Sarah S. Brannen is the author and/or illustrator of two dozen children’s books, including “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Miles Comes Home.” She lives in Eastern Massachusetts.
I wrote the story for my young niece, who at the age of 7 thought every book should end with a wedding. In 2005, same-sex marriage had just been legalized in Massachusetts; it was a joyful time. I knew that a picture book featuring a wedding between two men would be controversial, but that was the story I wanted to tell. I wrote it for my family. I wrote it for my friends.
In the book, a little girl named Chloe is worried that her favorite uncle won’t have time for her after he and his boyfriend, Jamie, get married. As she gets to know Jamie, she realizes that two uncles are better than one. “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” was published in 2008, my first book and one of the first children’s books from a major US publisher to feature a same-sex wedding.
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
It quickly generated plenty of outrage. I heard from people who called the book “filth,” “garbage,” and “a product of Satan.” But I also heard from people who said they wished my book had been around when they were kids. When a new edition of “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” was published in 2020, I didn’t hear many complaints. I thought the country had changed.
Advertisement
I was wrong.
In 2021, efforts to restrict or ban the book ramped up. In a public library in Arkansas, the book was exiled to a high shelf in the adult section, out of the reach of children. In a Florida school district, it was accessible to children only with a note from their parents. A library in Texas risked getting shut down by city officials for keeping the book on its shelves.
Advertisement
And now my picture book is at the center of Mahmoud v. Taylor, a US Supreme Court case.
It all began with a school district in Montgomery County, Md., which added several LGBTQ picture books, including “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” to the K–5 reading curriculum. In 2023, a group of parents sued for the right to opt their children out of reading those books; it is unclear, at least to me, exactly what they meant by that. Would their children stay home if one of the books was going to be read in class? Would the books remain on classroom shelves? Could other children read the books in the presence of one of the plaintiffs’ children?
Last May, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the parents, who appealed. The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in the case for April 22.
A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would make it necessary for teachers in the Montgomery County school district to send advance notice to parents every time they read, teach, or even mention books about LGBTQ people in class. That same classroom may include a child with two moms or two dads or a transgender relative. What about a classroom that includes a gender-nonconforming child? What will it say to such children that some of their fellow students must leave class rather than even hear about the existence of people like them or the ones they love?
Advertisement
Every time I read “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” aloud, I remember why I wrote it. I wrote it for all of those children with LGBTQ families. Children need books about families like theirs. They also need books that introduce them to people different from themselves. No matter what the plaintiff parents in Mahmoud v. Taylor fear, books don’t seek to change their readers into something they are not. If books could do that, I would have grown up as a caterpillar and become a butterfly.
“Bobby and Jamie got married.” When I wrote that sentence in 2005, I hoped those five words might help open the door for children to see the possibility of a bigger, richer, more complicated world. Today, I fear that the door is closing. I hope the US Supreme Court will help keep it open.
