Corpus Christi teachers union distributes LGBTQ+ books to students as young as five; promote the initiative with drag performers

The Corpus Christi American Federation of Teachers distributed hundreds of LGBTQ+ novels to students, as part of its Pride Patrol campaign to educate children on pronoun usage and LGBTQ rights.

The AFT distributed more than 1,000 books on June 27 to children as young as five. The hundreds of young adult novels all reference sexual themes, transgenderism, homosexuality, or pansexuality. 

Only on the Weekends is a LGBTQ novel about a 15-year-old gay boy who finds himself in a love triangle and emotionally cheats on his boyfriend. Different Kinds of Fruit follows the story of a sixth grader whose binary crush schools her transgender father on pronoun usage. Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea is a queer middlegrade book in which a sixth grader develops a  budding romance with a nonbinary friend at the same time her widowed mother finds a lesbian lover. In the Key of Us depicts two 13-year-old girl bunkmates who develop a romantic relationship at music camp. 

Other books include Our Rainbow, a GLAAD-sponsored guide that teaches children what each color on the rainbow flag represents; We are Totally Normal, a book that normalizes experimenting with sexuality; This is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, They, and Us, an LGBTQ+ anthology; and Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ People Who Made History, which features known pedarast Harvey Milk.

The AFT held the book distribution at its office on June 27 in conjunction with the Coastal Bend Trans Alliance, which operates “the first and currently only LGBTQIA+ community center in Texas south of San Antonio.” The event featured multiple drag performers who promoted the cause. The groups held a second event on June 28 titled, “Reading Opens the World: Read and Resist.”

The Corpus Christi AFT is the city’s only teacher’s union. National AFT President Randi Weingarten previously stated her support for enforcing an LGBTQ agenda in classrooms 

“We help [students] learn how to think, not what to think, and have the tools so they can discern between fact and fiction,” Weingarten said in April. “That scares the bejeezus out of these extremist who don’t want kids to know how to think. They don’t want kids to empathize with people who may be different, but that is how America gets better.”

LGBTQ book sales doubled in 2021 from the previous year and sales have skyrocketed 39 percent in 2022. According to NPD BookScan, the largest surge in LGBTQ fiction came from young adult novels.