The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - A Canadian Picture Book at the U.S. Supreme Court

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

How did a Canadian author's alphabet book end up at the United States Supreme Court? And what does this mean for 2SLGBTQ+ books for kids in Canada? We welcome Robin Stevenson to discuss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. How did a Canadian children's book about a puppy lost during a pride parade land before the US Supreme Court? The question isn't so out of place these days in our culture war obsessed society, which happened to ensnare our next guest. Robin Stevenson is the author of more than 30 books for children and teens, including Pride Puppy. And she joins us now on the line from Vancouver Island,

British Columbia to tell us all about her saga. Robin, good to meet you. How are you doing tonight? Yeah, great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. A pleasure. Describe Pride Puppy for us, if you would. Sure, yeah.

It's a rhyming alphabet book that tells the story of a family going to a pride parade with their toddler and baby, or little kid and toddler, and their puppy. And the puppy gets lost at the parade. And the community of lost at the parade, and the community of folks at the parade help reunite the family and the dog. And it's a rhyming alphabet book. So it begins A for awake, animals and all, B is for breakfast and baby and ball and so

on. It's a little different than some alphabet books because it does actually tell a little bit of a story, but it's a very simple story. They go to Pride, the dog gets briefly lost, they find the dog, they go home. So it's a very simple story, but it's beautifully illustrated by Julie McLaughlin. It's very colorful, it's very vibrant, and it provides a glimpse of the diverse community that celebrates Pride parades, and is very much inspired by our Pride parades out here on the West Coast. In fact, for those of us who are watching on television or on their computers or whatever, Sheldon, bring this up a few ways because we're going to show a little sample of what here.

Now this is, we're at E now in the alphabet. E is for everyone under the sun and then F is for feathers, for flags, and for fun. And you're right, Julie McLaughlin's pictures are quite beautiful. So tell us why you felt the need to write this book. Yeah, so I've been going to Pride celebrations for at least 35 years. I went to my first Pride events in Toronto when I was still in high school. And after I had a kid myself, my partner and I took our kid to Pride every year. We usually met up with my parents. And my parents actually marched in Toronto Pride back in the 90s with the group

PFLAG after I came out as queer. So, you know, Pride's been a big part of my life for a very long time. I love Pride celebrations and I think they're a great chance for kids to see that there's lots of different kinds of families out there. And for kids from families like mine with two moms, a chance to see that there's lots of different kinds of families out there. And for kids from families like mine with two moms, a chance to see that there's lots of families like theirs out there as well. And our Pride parades out here on the West Coast are just wonderful, wonderful events. And when my own kid was little,

there actually weren't any books about Pride for young kids. But it's an event that many families go to every year. And I thought that there should be a book that reflected that celebration. So that was sort of where the idea for the book came from. I should ask you, since we're going back 30 years when your parents first started participating in these things, whether that was considered

a bit of a gutsy thing to do back then. Yeah, I mean, I think so. If I think about certainly, you know, being in high school, being a teenager and young adult back in those days, there really was no representation at all. Which, so for me, you know, I think pride became particularly important because it was one of the few places where you actually got to see that there was this huge community of folks out there. And, you. And I'm very grateful now that we do have more representation, that there are so many

more books than there used to be, and very grateful for all the work and advocacy over the last decades that has brought that about. So despite the fact that we're dealing with this backlash and book bans and so on. The reality is that books like this just didn't exist when I was a young person or even when my kid was born. So there's something to celebrate there and that we do actually have these books now. Well, let's cut to the chase here.

How is it that this ended up a case before the United States Supreme Court? Yeah, so this is a case that began in late 2022. A school district in Montgomery County, Maryland, decided to adopt a number of picture books with LGBTQ plus characters as part of an effort to diversify their curriculum and make sure that all the kids and families in their community were represented in the books on their shelves and in their classrooms. Some parents objected to the inclusion of these books and began protesting. That was actually when I first learned about the case, I suddenly started getting a lot of online hate and didn't know where it was coming from. So sort of started Googling and found that these protests were happening in Maryland and Fox News had covered the story and had really focused on Pride Puppy. So that was how I initially found out about this.

Then in spring of 2023, three of those parents, or three couples, filed a lawsuit with the support of the Beckett Fund, a conservative religious law firm that has taken on many cases that have sought to undermine LGBTQ plus rights in the States. They had taken on this case and wanted the right to opt out. They wanted to be warned in advance if these books were going to be used in the class wanted to be warned in advance if these books were going to be used in the class or talked about so that they could take their children out of school for that, or out of the class for that reading or for that discussion. And that lawsuit worked its way up through the courts over the last couple of years. And in January, we learned there's nine books involved in this case.

So in January, we learned that the Supreme Court had agreed to hear this case. And in April, the case went before the Supreme Court. Now, I don't think the United States Supreme Court televises its hearings, but they do allow audio. And as a result, we're going to play a little snippet here. This is an exchange of oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court. We've got an exchange between Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court judges, and the attorney for Montgomery County schools. So let's play that children, if you would.

Pride Puppy was the book that was used for the pre-kindergarten curriculum. That's no longer in the curriculum. That's the one where they are supposed to look for the leather and things and bondage things like that? It's not bondage. It's a woman and a leather. Sex worker, right? No. No? That's not correct.

No. Gosh, I read it. Is it drag queen and drag queen? Drag queen and drag queen. Correct. The leather that they're pointing to is a woman in a leather jacket. And one of the words is drag queen in the city. And they're supposed to look for those?

It is an option at the end of the book. Correct. Yeah, okay. And you've included these in the English language curriculum rather than the human sexuality curriculum to influence students. Is that fair? Were you listening to this live by chance? Yeah, I was listening to this live. What did you think?

It was utterly surreal, honestly. There had been a lot of misrepresentation of Pride Puppy over the last couple of years. That was pretty widespread in right-wing media. Some of it was, you know, sort of got increased. It began with the lawyers. It was right on the, I think it was a key strategy of the law firm in this case was this misrepresentation of the book. It did get increasingly bizarre over the two years leading up to the case and increasingly removed from anything that was actually in the book.

But I honestly, I almost fell off the couch. I really did. Like I, it didn't occur to me that they wouldn't actually read the books. Well, let's take a look here. He does say he read the book. I don't understand how it's possible that he read the book and came away with that interpretation. L is indeed for leash. The leash belongs to the dog. There is a leather jacket. Again, this is a fairly common fashion choice. It's just a piece of outerwear. It's not that unusual. It's definitely not an indication of bondage or sex work. For me, it's bizarre to read

a children's book and come up with that kind of interpretation. But yes, there was a lot of misinformation leading up to it. But I really thought that the Supreme Court justices would actually read the books that were involved in the case. These are books that take less than five minutes to read. So yeah, I was really glad. Sorry, Ron, do you have any idea where he got the notion that what we just saw,

which was a dog on a leash and a bunch of people behind the dog and a kid in a wheelchair, which is, you know, you don't always see physically disabled people portrayed in books, so it's kind of nice to see that as well. Do you know where he got the, what he clearly thought was more nefarious interpretation of what was going on? You know, I've seen so many different people online speculating about where he got it from

and I've seen people come up with various explanations. I don't know what he was thinking. I mean, I think that it is certainly something that had been pushed by right-wing media for a couple of years. You know, some of the things that people had said about the book were... There's a number of items on each page that start with a different letter of the alphabet. For example, on the Zed page, there's a child's hoodie with a zipper on it. Some of the people writing about the book over the couple of years leading up to the

case would say things like, this book includes images of leather and zippers, linking the items to imply that those two things are somehow connected and that there's some kind of sexual content. In fact, it's a parent in a leather jacket on one page and the kid's sweater with a zipper on it on another page. Well, in fact, the judge says something to the effect of you're trying to influence, quote unquote, kids by portraying things in a certain way. What did you interpret that to mean? Yeah, well, that was very interesting because in the earlier part of the arguments, they

also focused on the book Uncle Bobby's Wedding, which is a story by Sarah Brannon about a little girl whose uncle is getting married and she's worried that he's not going to have as much time to hang out with her anymore. And the mom reassures her and he gets married, he marries another man. And with respect to that book, they also argued that because the wedding was a happy occasion, that this was somehow coercive, that this was an attempt to tell children what to think, to tell them that it was okay for men to marry other men. That just the portrayal of a happy marriage was somehow coercive. So it really seemed, listening to the oral arguments, that they were suggesting that any representation of LGBTQ people in a book that showed them living their lives, being happy, having a nice day at a parade, getting married, that any of those kinds of representations

were somehow an attempt to influence or coerce children to believe certain things. You know, it's a reasonable question to ask, at what age do you introduce some of the concepts that the book is dealing with, or not dealing with for that matter, to young people, but it doesn't sound like when kids read this book, they are inferring that there is something sexual about the content in the book. Why do you think that adults seem to take that interpretation?

Some adults. Yeah, I think some adults apply a very different standard to SLGBTQIA people and families than they do to other families. So a family with two moms is no more sexual content than a book about a family with a mom and a dad. You know, I have an earlier book called Pride Colors, which is a board book that includes a photo and a dad. Um, you know, I have an earlier book called pride colors, which, um, is a board book that includes a photo of a baby with two moms and people who

attempted to ban that book in Virginia, um, referred to the book as pornographic and sexually explicit, uh, because it includes a photo of a baby with two moms. Kids who read that book just see a photo of a family. Um, and I think, you know, the same with pride puppy. When I, when I read this book to kids, photo of a family. I think the same with Pride Puppy. When I read this book to kids, they focus on they want to tell me their dog's name, they want to tell me what ice cream they like, they want to tell me if they have a connection to Pride,

if they've been to a Pride parade. They want to tell me about their grandma because there's a grandma in the book. They don't come up with the kind of interpretations that Neil Gorsuch or right-wing media are coming up with. But I think it's, you know, some of the adults who are reading the book and who really have a hard time thinking about queer people and families without sexualizing them that are coming up with these interpretations.

I gather the province of Alberta recently announced some new standards for determining what kinds of books are appropriate for school libraries. We don't have to go into chapter and verse about what those standards say, but what do you think of them? Yeah, well it's interesting because I think that what we're seeing in Alberta is very much following

the same playbook that we've seen in the US over the last few years. And the situation with Pride Puppy really kind of came in the middle of an epidemic really kind of came in the middle of an epidemic of book bands in the States that's continuing to escalate. And the playbook that we've seen in the U S is very much the same that we're seeing in Alberta now. Parents have always been able to go to their teacher, their kids teachers and say, you know, I have a concern about this topic or this

book and have that conversation. That's not what we're seeing now. This is a very organized, well-funded political campaign where these book bands are being used to target marginalized communities, LGBTQ plus folks. In Alberta, this wasn't a few local parents who raised this concern. This was the group Action for Canada, who are very much modeled on groups like Moms for Liberty in the US. They're anti-public schools. Their website encourages, says that schools are damaging children, encourages parents to pull their children out of schools, encourages people to homeschool according to Christian principles.

They're not supportive of public schools. They're not involved in public schools. They're an anti-immigrant group. They're Islamophobic. Their website is full of conspiracy theories. They're blatantly anti-LGBTQIA. I think that this is not a group that should be influencing curriculum choices or library collections.

And I think that Alberta's government, if they want to talk about curriculum, if they want to talk about library collections, should be engaging with librarians and teachers who have the training and skills and experience to make those decisions and curate those collections for the training and skills and experience to make those decisions and curate those collections for the schools and to provide advice about book selection, not listening to a group which has been promoting hate and undermining public education. The name of the book one more time is Pride Puppy. We invite people to take a look at it for themselves and make their own decisions.

And Robin Stevenson, the author, we are grateful you spent some time with us here on TVO tonight to talk about it. Thank you. Thank you.