No to teaching LGBTQIA+ respect?
That seems to be the message from the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS), which released a ruling siding with anti-LGBTQIA+ parents in the state of Maryland who wanted to opt their children out of reading books with LGBTQIA+ themes.
Deciding based on their political affiliations, the justices voted 6-3 in support of a group of parents who claimed that a curriculum adopted in 2022 by the Montgomery County Public Schools for elementary age children violated their “religious rights” to discriminate.
The court’s right-wing Republican majority stated that the parents who brought the case are entitled to a preliminary injunction while it proceeds. And the introduction of the books “along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” wrote SCOTUS justice Samuel Alito.
The US Constitution’s First Amendment protects the right to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs. For the anti-LGBTQIA+ parents, this right includes the right to pull their children out of lessons they personally find offensive. These parents similarly noted that the school allows parents to opt older children out of sex education.
Dissenting to the decision, justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the result of the case will be “chaos for this nation’s public schools”. “Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parents’ beliefs,” she said.
The books that these parents did not want their children exposed to include Uncle Bobby’s Wedding that tells the story of a girl being told about her uncle’s planned gay wedding, and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope that is about a transgender boy. These books were added in the Montgomery County Public Schools supposedly to provide diversity in the stories children read.
