Frog and Toad are gay

My favorite children’s book of all time is the “Frog and Toad” series. There were four easy to read chapter books written in the 1970’s: “Frog and Toad are Friends”, “Frog and Toad Together” “Frog and Toad All Year” and “Days With Frog and Toad”. I loved reading these books to my kids. At the time I had not come out. I envied the special relationship Frog and Toad had with each other.

My oldest daughter called a couple weeks ago all excited. She recently started a job as a children’s librarian and had checked in a copy of the children’s book, “And Tango Makes Three”. It is a children’s picture book based on a true story of two male penguins that hatch and raise an orphan egg. “Have you heard of the book? You have to get it. It is so cute.” Although I don’t have a copy, I am very familiar with it. In fact, according to the American Library Association it is the most challenged book requested to be removed from public libraries and school shelves because it promotes homosexuality, and is anti-family, and unsuited to age group. “Harry Potter’s” author, J.K. Rowling, is frequently challenged for claims that she promotes occult themes. Now that she says Dumbledore is gay, she will now be challenged for promoting homosexuality too even though there is nothing in the series that implies that.

What surprises me is that none of these wacko fundamentalist have discovered or figured out that the “I Can Read” children’s four-book series, “Frog and Toad”, is a primer for same-sex relationships. Whether you and your buddy are “best friends forever” or a married couple, this series will model the skills needed to have a long-term same sex relationship. The series takes you through the everyday circumstances of Frog and Toad with simplicity and humor, without moralizing, on what characterizes an enduring gay relationship: compassion, affection, gratitude, generosity, creativity, thoughtfulness, laughter, and sharing life together.

In our relationship, my husband, E, is the tall, lean Frog and I am the shorter, stockier Toad. Frog (E) is clearly the calmer of the two and the one more eager to get outdoors and to organize and plan things. Toad (me) is more temperamental and impatient, and a consummate worrier. He is frequently repentant and constantly devoted to his more rational counterpart. Toad (me) regularly grumbles and whines, while Frog (E) quietly and thoughtfully goes about helping his friend get over his upsets. Like Frog, I have a hard time not eating cookies and I also look funny in a bathing suit.

I had assumed that author and illustrator Arnold Lobel was gay because I had come across his name on the AIDS Quilt website. When I looked up biographical information on him I found he was married with two kids. The cause of death listed in the obituary was cardiac arrest on December 4, 1987. It could be he wasn’t gay but had contacted AIDS from an infected blood transfusion or blood products. (Or maybe like me, he lived a closeted life as a gay married man.)

TRIVIA: The Broadway musical “A Year with Frog and Toad” was produced by Lobel’s daughter, set designer Adrianne Lobel, and stared the designer's husband, Mark Linn-Baker, as the lovably cantankerous Toad.