TALLAHASSEE — A Leon County mother says her child was harmed after reading a page of a children’s book from a school library explaining that tennis legend Billie Jean King is gay.
Katie Lyons’ daughter, then a second grader at a Tallahassee elementary school, brought home a children’s book about King — and also brought questions to her mother about a page regarding King’s sexuality.
Lyons submitted a complaint. And, at a Tuesday morning hearing, Lyons explained why she believed the book, “I am Billie Jean King,” should be pulled from elementary school shelves.
“Around this time, I realized I was gay,” the page in question, one out of 40 total, reads. “Being gay means that if you’re a girl, you love and have romantic feelings for other girls — and if you’re a boy, you love and have romantic feelings for other boys.”
Lyons said this is counter to state law, largely citing the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, which prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.
“This book discusses sexual orientation, a topic that is prohibited by Florida law, is inappropriate for this age group and ultimately infringes on our rights as parents,” Lyons said.
In the complaint, filed on April 25, Lyons was more specific with her concerns than just “sexual orientation,” a term broadly referring to whom one is attracted to.
“I object to material that discusses being gay and what it means to be gay,” wrote Lyons, who declined an interview after the hearing.
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Also at the hearing was D.J. Wright, a retired principal who the district picked as a third-party official to listen into the hearing and make a recommendation to the school board about what should be done with the book. Wright has 14 work days to do so, with the board making the final decision at a later date.
And, sitting across the table from Lyons was Shane Syfrett, assistant superintendent of academic services for Leon County Schools.
Syfrett defended the inclusion of the title on school shelves, saying getting rid of it would “limit all students and families from accessing this material freely when it may only be objectionable to some families.”
He pointed out that the book was part of a series called “Ordinary People Change the World,” numerous books of which could be found on school shelves, including Harriet Tubman, Neil Armstrong and Walt Disney.
“The exclusion of one of these profiles just because of the identification of the main subject as homosexual is not the intention of any law or statute passed by the Florida Legislature,” Syfrett said.
He pointed to a clarification the Florida Department of Education issued stating that “incidental references” in books to LGBTQ people are not prohibited.
Syfrett said the school system would also be implementing a new process that allows parents to approve reading material before their children check them out.
“We thoroughly believe in a parent’s right to address certain topics when and how they choose, but the job of our system is to protect that right rather than remove rights from others,” he said.
‘I am Billie Jean King’
King is most known for winning the “Battle of the Sexes” match against Bobby Riggs in 1973, but the tennis legend is also an activist for gender equality and LGBTQ rights.
King, who was married to sports promoter Larry King, was forced to come out to the public about her sexuality in 1981.
“Eventually, Larry and I stopped being married and I fell in love with a wonderful woman named Ilana,” King’s cartoon depiction says in the book. “You can’t choose who you fall in love with. Your heart will tell you.”
Days before the Leon County challenge was filed, King had called the “Don’t Say Gay” law “sad.”
“I’m very big on inclusion, everybody being their authentic self,” King said at a Delray Beach press conference. “If you heard my personal journey, which I thought I was straight, I realized later in life I wasn’t. I had to figure out who am I, who is my authentic self. Going through that journey just for me personally, the important thing is to be welcoming to everyone.”
The author of the book series has condemned book bans on his Twitter. “Fight for books. Fight for stories,” Brad Meltzer wrote, along with a video post explaining the history of banned books in the United States.
“That’s what all book bans are always about, power and control and the people losing it,” he said in the video post.
Book ban backdrop
This is the first time Florida’s capital city school district has gone through the book challenge process after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year’s Curriculum Transparency Act into law.
It requires districts to catalog every book on their shelves and put a formal review process in place for complaints. And, while neither Florida Department of Education nor the governor’s office have called for any bans on books, titles have been purged and restricted in school libraries across the state.
Just last week, the authors of “And Tango Makes Three” filed a federal lawsuit against a Florida county and the state over restrictions on their children’s book about two male penguins who raise a chick together.
It also takes issue with the so-called”Don’t Say Gay” law, which was being used to justify the restriction.
Originally, that law only applied to those up to the third grade.
But DeSantis recently signed a bill expanding the restrictions from third to eighth grade. That takes effect on July 1. Before that, though, the State Board of Education voted to prohibit classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation through the 12th grade.
“We are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy, and kids should have an upbringing that reflects that,” DeSantis said when he signed the expansion and three other bills directly or indirectly targeting transgender people and the broader LGBTQ community.
Book bans and restrictions in another Florida county are being challenged in federal court by a free speech organization, PEN America, and the nation’s largest publisher, Penguin Random House. Parents and authors are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which says Florida has become an epicenter for a nationwide book-banning trend.
“Books are being ordered removed from libraries, or subject to restricted access within those libraries, based on an ideologically driven campaign to push certain ideas out of schools,” write the plaintiffs.
DeSantis has maintained that the idea of books bans across Florida, which have made many headlines across the state and nation, are a “hoax.” Conversely, he has bashed books that have been recently restricted in public schools as pornographic, violent or otherwise inappropriate.
“Exposing the ‘book ban’ hoax is important because it reveals that some are attempting to use our schools for indoctrination,” DeSantis said in a statement. “In Florida, pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards.”
Contributed: Ana Goñi-Lessan of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida and Brittany Misencik of the Pensacola News Journal.
This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule is based in Tallahassee, Fla. He can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com. Twitter: @DouglasSoule. Alaijah Brown is with the Tallahassee Democrat and can be reached at ABrown1@gannett.com