Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

I have wanted, as did poet Mary Oliver, to keep a distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. I have tried, I really have, but they persist in trying to diminish my light, trying to shroud the world in ugliness and darkness.

Today, knowing that being public about gender identity, even in the 21st century, is often fraught with risk and controversy, I write with admiration about Americans who have helped shape our nation while defying conventional norms of identity and belonging.

I cannot imagine living in a world bereft of the varieties of queer beauty; bereft of Mary Oliver, Willa Cather, and May Sarton; without James Baldwin and Walt Whitman; without Tim Cook and Peter Thiel; without Sally Ride, Angela Davis, Etel Adnan, Tammy Baldwin, and Tomie DePaola.

Even more so, I cannot imagine how bereft my — and your — grandchildren would be without Where the Wild Things Are, Harriet the Spy, Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny and Frog and Toad; all created by LGBTQIA+ artists fully embraced in America’s Public Square.

I cannot imagine descriptions of love without including Emily Dickinson who wrote, “Susie… come home… and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to… I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you… that the expectation… makes me feel hot and feverish, and my heart beats so fast.”

There is no such love in the dark, fearful, heteronormative world of white supremacy. There are no quickening heartbeats of love and inclusiveness, no embraces for the vulnerable, no shelter for the sojourner.

Today, over a third of Americans, citizens of a nation once globally admired as a beacon of hope and democracy, are deaf to Walt Whitman’s “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear ... Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else ...” and have formed themselves into a cult committed to denying the aspirational beauty and diversity of our homeland.

From book-banning to challenging legitimate voting rights, it is a cult today challenging the inclusive values to which America aspires. It is targeting our democratic institutions, communities and peoples of color, gay marriage, separation of church and state, public education, LGBTQIA+ peoples and others with the intent of controlling, marginalizing, delegitimizing and disenfranchising them.

“People who try to control people and change people’s habits are the ones that make all the trouble. If you don’t like somebody, walk away... But don’t try and make them like you,” Louise Fitzhugh wrote in Harriet the Spy.

They have already come for Beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird,Maus, Homegoing, and The Hate U Give.

They will soon be hunting for The Runaway Bunny.

Tomorrow they will come for Maurice Sendak and accuse him of grooming children In The Night Kitchen.

Someday soon they will come for Emily Dickinson.

Just as many of Emily Dickinson’s letters were burned after her death to shield (?) her secret passions, I believe that anti-groomers, fearing that her poetry will inflame the hormones of vulnerable dreamy-eyed would-be romantics, will someday attempt to deny her space on school shelves.

Sensitive, perhaps, as were May Sarton and Tomie DePaola a century later, to possible public disapprobation for the intersecting identities she wrote about, Dickinson often untethered her usual gender pronouns from normative biology-related pronouns — “bearded” pronouns, she called them — to such an extent I understand many poems exist in distinctly- different gendered versions.

Indeed, Dickinson so challenged gender conventions that in Rearrange a ‘Wife’s’ affection! she wrote:

“When they dislocate my Brain! / Amputate my freckled Bosom! / Make me bearded like a man!”

York, Maine’s May Sarton wrote of publishing at a time that “The fear of homosexuality [was] so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing ... to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality ...”

Tomie DePaola, who lived in New London, NH, didn’t identify as gay because, as he said in 2019, “If it became known you were gay, you’d have a big red ‘G’ on your chest, and schools wouldn’t buy your books anymore.”

A big red ‘G’ on your chest.

DePaola’s Oliver Button is a Sissy about a boy who liked to read, paint, and tap dance and was the first picture book for children to use the word ‘gay,’ was banned in some American schools for being “anti-sport.”

That reads like grooming: Ban it.

Why stop with Oliver Button. Shouldn’t DePaola’s Strega Nona, a story about a Grandma Witch with a magic pot that makes pasta, be banned for encouraging witchcraft and endorsing foreign foods?

That reads like grooming: Ban it. Ban Harry Potter, too, while you’re at it.

Frog and Toad must be stopped.

Ban. Ban. Ban.

I can no longer keep a distance from those who think they have the answers because they persist in trying to deny dignity and equality to people who are deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

While I cannot keep a distance from those who believe that America should be a place where only Dick and Jane frolic, where Donna Reed cooks, where Father knows Best; I want to advocate for their children — and mine.

To advocate that children of every ethnicity, color, race, and religion have the opportunity to safely take risks, to safely learn, as did Max, where ‘Wild Things’ are.

“Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye [to the Wild Things] and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot.”

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