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Split decision keeps “And Tango Makes Three” in school libraries after complaint about book’s subject matter

Tango is safe for now.

After two meetings and about four hours of sometimes fractious debate, the North Kansas City Schools Board of Education decided on a 3-2 vote Dec. 21 to keep the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” on library shelves.

“And Tango Makes Three” was published in 2005 and written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. It tells the tale of Roy and Silo, two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York City who raise a chick together.

John Nixon complained to the school district about the book after his son, a first-grader at Bell Prairie Elementary School, checked it out of the library Sept. 3 and brought it home.

The boy’s parents were reportedly “shocked” and “angered” by the content of what Nixon characterized as a “pro-homosexual storybook.”

“This book is completely offensive to parents wishing to shelter their child as much as possible from immoral behavior,” Nixon wrote in his complaint.

Nixon asked the district to remove the book from every school library.

Administrators decided to keep the book but restrict it so Nixon’s son is not allowed to check it out.

At a Nov. 14 Board of Education meeting, Nixon compared the district’s decision to telling his son not to bring a gun to school after his son was shot.

“The damage has already been done,” Nixon said.

The book is nothing less than an attempt to “insinuate” that there’s nothing wrong with the “horrendously immoral homosexual act,” Nixon said.

“Justin Richardson had an agenda in mind when he wrote this book,” he said.

“And Tango Makes Three” has consistently been among the books most in danger of being banned since its release, according to the American Library Association.

Nixon cited those widespread challenges as evidence that the book is inappropriate for children.

Most of the school board members expressed some discomfort with the book’s subject matter, but they disagreed on the appropriate response.

At both the Dec. 14 and 21 meetings, member Phil Holloway was the most vocal about wanting to restrict the book so that it would not be generally available to all elementary school students.

The book’s sexual themes were not appropriate for younger students, Holloway argued.

“I’ve got a problem with this book,” he said. “Is this appropriate for elementary children? I would say no.”

Holloway suggested the district should restrict the book so that parents have to give permission for their children to have access to it. Board President Spencer Fields and member Jan Kauk agreed.

School board member Chace Ramey joined Melissa Joy Roberts and Terry Ward in opposing broader restrictions.

“I firmly believe that if this was about a boy penguin and a girl penguin, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” Ramey said.

Ramey agreed the book has “questionable material” but doubted that current district policies provided a Constitutional means to pull the book from library shelves.

Removing the book because it deals with human sexuality might open the board to a lawsuit under the First Amendment, he said.

“How do we not ban all other books that deal with that same issue,” Ramey said.

Roberts was the book’s most vociferous defender.

“I do not find any part of this book that is inappropriate for this age,” Roberts said. “If you ban something like this, what do you do when you have a student in the class who has two daddies? Do you ban them from school?”

In the final vote Dec. 21, Ramey, Roberts and Kathleen Harris voted to uphold the district’s previous decision to keep the book but restrict it so Nixon’s son is not allowed to check it out. Holloway and Fields voted against the motion. Kauk and Ward were not present.

Staff writer Ray Weikal can be reached at 389-6637 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Comments (1)

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Waste of time and taxpayer dollars
written by Tres, December 31, 2009

Ok. We just spent all this effort debating whether a TRUE STORY ABOUT PENGUINS belongs in a library funded by the public dollar (thus no discrimination allowed). If people want their children raised as homophobes, unfortunately that is something they can do in the privacy of their homes, just as people can raise their children to be bigoted in other ways as well. As much as I would love to have viewpoints disagreeing with mine vanish from the public spotlight, thank heavens that will not happen until America is no longer a free country.

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