Conservatives: Gay-Themed Picture Book = "Sex Education"

Ohhh...kaaaay, this is another new one. A Massachusettes elementary school teacher was teaching a lesson on the different kinds of weddings, and he read the gay-themed picture book King & King to a bunch of seven year-olds. Now a conservative group is threatening to sue because--get this--the teacher didn't notify parents, as required by law, that he was teaching "sex education."

"It's just so heinous and objectionable that they would do this," said Brian Camenker, president of the Parents Rights Coalition, a conservative Massachusetts-based advocacy group.

Camenker said he believes the school, Joseph Estabrook Elementary, broke a 1996 Massachusetts law requiring schools to notify parents of sex-education lessons. "There is no question in my mind that the law is being abused here," he said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of weeks there was some kind of (legal) action taken," he said.

Heinous and objectionable? They can't have read King & King, which I loved, and which, more importantly, is completely age-appropriate. But apparently these conservatives don't agree. They're arguing that merely mentioning anything "gay" in a classroom in Massachusettes (where, of course, same-sex marriage is legal) is "sex education."

But if that's true, wouldn't any book that portrays any heterosexual relationship or heterosexual marriage also be sex education? Wouldn't a teacher calling herself "Mrs.", which indicates that she is married and heterosexual, be sex ed?

I've reported on a lot of book challenges lately, but I think this may be the most ridiculous one yet (and yes, that includes my previous post where people were arguing that Harry Potter was turning children into witches).