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Michael Willhoite

@michael.willhoite

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When author and illustrator Michael Willhoite's book Daddy's Roommate hit the shelves in 1990, the blowback was unrelenting. The book, which tells the tale of a gay couple raising a son in a loving household, became the target of infuriated activists, including one Oregon man who characterized it as evidence of a "militant homosexual agenda." On a 1992 Larry King Live segment, a concerned guest denounced the book for its "explicit pictures of two men hugging each other." As one of the first widely distributed children's books to show gay people parenting, Daddy's Roommate was bound to make waves. But given that none of the pages contained graphic or risque content, Willhoite was surprised by the sheer scope of the backlash. A moment in the book where one of the gay characters is in bed, falling asleep next to his partner, fueled the fury. "People who read it let their imaginations fly away. They see the picture of the two men, and they imagine the next page is going to show one humping the other," Willhoite jokes. Willhoite, 77, tells New Times the controversy, however unsettling, was "a shot in the arm for sales." He wrote a follow-up with the same characters called Daddy's Wedding, which prompted another kerfuffle but did not draw the same level of ire as Daddy's Roommate. The outrage gradually petered out, and Daddy's Roommate went out of print. Now, more than 30 years after its publication, Daddy's Roommate has once again found itself the target of censorship. Last week, the Miami-Dade County school district confirmed to New Times that it had pulled the children's picture book from school libraries, including it in a list of removed works that the district deemed "inappropriate" for students. Get the whole story on miaminewtimes.com. Link in bio. ✍️ - @alexldeluca 📸 - @michael.willhoite #miaminewtimes #localnews #localjournalism #southflorida #daddysroomate #lgbtq #michaelwillhoite #daddyswedding #dontsaygay #tokillamockingbird #desantis #stopwokeact
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