His mother, a grouchy Queen who is tired of ruling and wishes to pass on the responsibility to her son, insists he must find a princess to marry.

[11] It earned an Honorable Mention in the "most unusual book of the year" category for Publishers Weekly's 2002 "Off the Cuff Awards.

The program was inspired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu's remarks, "Everyone is an insider, there are no outsiders — whatever their beliefs, whatever their color, gender or sexuality.

Lai's "Waiving the Magic Wand: Forging greater open-mindedness by subverting the conventions of fairy tales" discusses the book in the context of a 2001 Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities article which argues that fairy tales play "an even greater role in shaping lawful behaviour than the recorded law, because it lies at the heart of the children's literary canon and has a much greater claim to universality of influence … Not only do young children lack the critical faculties necessary to challenge the "truth" offered by these stories, but the jurisprudence of fairy tales maps onto a child's developmental phase of moral reasoning.

Most importantly, it lays out a gay-positive story with an ending that is gratifying for all parties, but without consciously constructing something like a judicial opinion that imposes a new legal or, worse still, punitive standard upon its reader.

[19] In a study of banned and challenged picture and primary books because of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) concerns covering the twenty years (1989–2009) for which data was available, King & King was fourth on the list after Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite (1st), Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman (2nd) and And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell (3rd).

[28] The Chicago Tribune attributes this controversy to more than homophobic parents but an increasing unease of the lack of control over their children.

[28] In response to King & King, Congressman Walter B. Jones (R – North Carolina) proposed a law in 2005 called the Parental Empowerment Act, which would have established national boards composed of parents to review books purchased by elementary schools, and which would have prohibited states that did not do so from receiving federal education funding.

[29][30] In September 2007, Democratic primary front-runners were asked, in one of their debates, their opinion on the book and whether they were comfortable with children having access to it.

John Edwards and Barack Obama strongly supported it, while Hillary Clinton described it as an issue of "parental discretion.

[13] At the May 2005 hearing of the Public Services Committee many of the speakers asserted that "children's books showing family situations different from traditional marriage are pornography," which the executive director of the OMLS denied stating, "none of the material in question is illegal or pornographic.

"[13] Later that month the OMLS Commission voted 10–7 to move "easy, easy-reader, and tween" books containing "sensitive or controversial" themes to an area that could only be accessed by adults.

[32] Prior, state representative Sally Kern had spearheaded an effort to keep such books away from children; in May 2005, the Oklahoma House passed a nonbinding House resolution 1039, also introduced by Kern, to "confine homosexually themed books and other age-inappropriate material to areas exclusively for adult access and distribution.

[36] The plaintiffs claimed that using the book in school constituted sex education without parental notification, which would be a violation of their civil rights and state law.

[17][41] In March 2004 the Associated Press reported on the Hartsells of Wilmington, North Carolina, who are the parents of a then first-grader who brought the book home which ends with "the two princes kissing with a red heart covering their lips.

"[45] Shelby County, Indiana's library vote disagreed with a formal complaint that said the parent was forced to explain "why two men were kissing", but did agree to move the book to a section for children eight to twelve.

[45] In October 2006, also in Massachusetts, the anti-gay group Family Research Council (FRC) co-ordinated Liberty Sunday broadcast throughout the U.S., "aimed to show how the gay-rights movement is undermining religious freedom.

"[46] Conservative religious groups in the United Kingdom opposed the "No Outsiders" project, introduced in 2007, which included the book.

Elizabeth Atkinson, the project's director, said, "These books are presenting one aspect of the spectrum of daily life...Many, many children in this country have this as part of their everyday experience.

"[14] In September 2007, "[A]ppalled by images of two princes standing together at an altar and later kissing," the Macungie, Pennsylvania supervisors were petitioned to pull the book from its library.