Scholastic Reverses Decision to Exclude Gay Friendly Book from Fairs

During the past 48 hours more than 4,000 Change.org members joined in calling for Scholastic Books to reverse their decision to exclude a book from Scholastic's popular book fairs, simply because the book featured two moms raising a child. The book in question is Luv Ya Bunches by best-selling children’s book author Lauren Myracle. If this book isn't on your must-read list yet, it should be simply for its ability to spark conversations about the role LGBT parents play in our society.

Late today we got word, after discussions with Scholastic representatives, that the company has decided to reverse their earlier decision and include the book in their spring book fairs. That's an awesome victory from one of the biggest and most influential educational book publishers and book retailers in the world, and it sends the clear message that there's absolutely nothing wrong with two men or two women raising a child.

You can read Scholastic's full statement right here. The statement doesn’t speak to the reasons they initially excluded Luv Ya Bunches from their book fairs (which was because Myracle included same sex parents and refused to include a heterosexual couple when that was requested by Scholastic), but it does make clear that not only will they be including Luv Ya Bunches in their spring fairs, but they have also affirmed that they “are committed to a review process that considers all books equally regardless of their inclusion of LGBT characters and same sex parents.”

That’s great news, and we applaud Scholastic’s commitment of not discriminating against books with LGBT characters moving forward. It’s also worth noting that their response is part of a larger trend where companies have to act fast in order to respond to the calls from activists to respect equal rights. This is the fourth occasion in less than 6 months here on the Gay Rights blog in which companies have changed their ways in response to actions from the Change.org community. Whether it's ROCKSTAR Energy Drink, Tim Horton's Coffee, Live Nation or Scholastic Books, the message here is pretty clear: people will not tolerate anti-gay business practices, regardless of the intentions behind them.

Any company, like Scholastic, that wants to attract a large mainstream group of customers needs to not only reject anti-gay policies, but also to instill a corporate culture that will prevent the “lapses” and “mistakes” and encourage thoughtful decision making in the first place.

The author of Luv Ya Bunches, Lauren Myracle, perhaps said it best: "Over 200,000 kids in America are raised by same-sex parents...It’s not an issue to clean up or hide away."

In just 48 hours our community did a great job coming together to send that very message. Special recognition should also go to Dana Rudolph at Mombian for initially alerting the community, School Library Journal for raising awareness across the web, GLAAD for their support, and the Family Equality Council, the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, and Democratic Underground for writing about the controversy and linking to the petition.

This was a victory for us all -- not only for getting a business to respect LGBT rights, but to send a larger message about the dignity of LGBT families around the globe.

(Photo courtesy of Playful Librarian's photostream on Flickr.)