The fact is these kids are exposed to sex and gender as soon as they learn there is a difference between boy and girl. Hey what do you tell a boy in kindergarten when they need to go to the bathroom. That’s right in all their younger grades they are instructed to use the bathroom of their gender, boy go to the boys bathroom, girls go to the girls bathroom. That teaches them gender regardless of these cis straight religious people want to admit it or not. Plus their goal seems to deny their kids the idea that some people are different, have different feelings when those very kids are in their class and maybe their friends? They seek to deny these kids friendships with people who are different from them. It reminds me of the segregation issues in the southern state. White supremacist did not want their pretty white kids in the same class as the black kids they felt were … something. It is like they thought the black was able to spread and be caught. No matter if these religious people like it or not the world has changed, society has changed and it is not the time of their bible nor the fabled 1950s they dream existed. Trying to deny the existance of the LGBTQ+ is like trying to deny black people exist. Hugs.
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Parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, want to be able to opt out of instruction on gender and sexuality that they say goes against their religious convictions.
January 17, 2025 at 6:54 p.m.A large group of parents protested in Rockville, Maryland, on June 27, 2023, in an effort to allow their children to opt out of books that feature LGBTQ+ characters in Montgomery County schools. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)andParents, who are Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox, filed suit in 2023, saying the policy violates their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.
The case puts the high court at the center of a contentious national debate over how to teach and treat gender and sexuality in schools, which has spurred fights over books, bathroom use and on which teams transgender athletes should be allowed to play.
Eric Baxter, an attorney for the families, said in a statement that the school system’s decision to disallow opt-outs was “cramming down controversial gender ideology” to 3-year-old pupils. Becket, a public interest institute that pushes for religious liberty, is representing the families, and has been involved in other cases on LGBTQ+ issues.
“The Court must make clear: Parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality,” Baxter said.
Montgomery County schools declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. But the district wrote in filings to the high court that an adverse ruling could upend long-standing legal precedent that guides how schools teach.
“Petitioners seek to unsettle a decades-old consensus that parents who choose to send their children to public school are not deprived of their right to freely exercise their religion simply because their children are exposed to curricular materials the parents find offensive,” attorneys for the schools wrote.
During the 2022-2023 school year, Montgomery County schools introduced a reading list of books that included LGBTQ+ characters as part of an effort to be more inclusive to its diverse student population. The lists were intended for students from prekindergarten to 12th grade and were created with parental feedback.
The school system required teachers to read at least one storybook a year from a group of titles that included “Pride Puppy,” which is about a gay pride parade; “Intersection Allies,” which is about a group of children discussing their differences; and “Love, Violet,” which is about a girl who has feelings for a female classmate.
“The storybooks are not used in any lessons related to gender and sexuality,” the school district wrote in its filing. “Nor is any student asked or expected to change his or her views about his or her own, or any other student’s, sexual orientation or gender identity. Instead, the books are made available for individual reading, classroom read-alouds, and other educational activities designed to foster and enhance literacy skills.”
The parents wrote in court documents that the Montgomery school board also issued guidance that instructed teachers to emphasize that “not everyone is a boy or girl” and that some “people identify with both, sometimes one more than the other and sometimes neither.”
As teachers started using the books in the classroom, some families wanted to opt their children out of the discussions due to concerns that the lessons and subsequent discussions would conflict with their religious views. The books that targeted elementary-aged students were particularly controversial.
Originally, some principals let families pull their children out of the classroom when the books were read. But in March 2023, the school system’s central office announced that opt-outs would not be permitted.
More than 1,100 parents signed a petition asking the district to restore the opt-out right and hundreds protested the decision. Maryland is one of 47 states and the District of Columbia that have opt-out or opt-in provisions for sex education in schools, according to the parents’ filing.
In May 2023, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against the school system, alleging that the district violated their First Amendment rights and that the decision went against a district policy that allows for religious accommodations. The parents are not asking the school system to drop the curriculum.
Other parents did not support opting out of the curriculum.
After the lawsuit was filed, the school system quietly stopped teaching two of the books referenced in the lawsuit because of concerns that it would “require teachers to explicitly teach vocabulary terms outside of the context of the lesson,” according to a district database.
The parents who sued the district asked a federal judge in Maryland for a preliminary injunction to restore the opt-out provision, but the judge denied the request, ruling the parents were unlikely to succeed because they could not show “that the no-opt-out policy burdens their religious exercise.”
That ruling was upheld by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, before the parents petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case. Oral arguments in the case will be scheduled later.
Mark Eckstein, a Montgomery County schools parent and LGBTQ+ advocate, said he wasn’t surprised the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, given that discussions around gender and sexuality have roiled school communities across the country.
“I strongly believe that the district court ruled correctly, and I’m hoping there will be a vigorous defense of the wisdom of that decision and MCPS’s policy,” he said.
Montgomery is one of a number of school districts where controversy has flared over books dealing with sexuality and gender. In 2023, a Georgia teacher was fired after she read a book about gender conformity to her fifth-grade class. She sued.
A group of parents in Dearborn, Michigan, sued the school district in 2022, seeking to remove books from school libraries they felt had inappropriate sexual content. Hundreds of mostly Muslim parents also protested at a school board meeting.
The effort was part of a broader push to pull some books from schools and libraries. The American Library Association found more than 4,200 book titles were targeted for removal from schools in libraries in 2023, greatly outpacing the 2,500 targeted the year before. Almost 50 percent of the titles dealt with gay and minority themes.
The Supreme Court has moved in recent terms to expand religion in education and the rights of the religious.
In 2o22, a divided court ruled that Washington state discriminated against a football coach who prayed at midfield after a high school football game. The same year, the high court ruled Maine could not exclude religious schools from a voucher program that provides public assistance for education.
Last year, the high court ruled that the constitution’s free speech provisions shield some businesses from being required to provide services to same-sex couples, after a web designer argued she should not have to do such work because of her religious beliefs.
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The case was filed by the Catholic anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Becket Fund, whose senior counsel celebrates below.
The Becket Fund last appeared here in July 2024 when they sued to overturn Michigan’s ban on ex-gay torture.
In 2014, the Becket Fund joined with NOM, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, and Alliance Defending Freedom to form an anti-LGBTQ “supergroup” to battle same-sex marriage.
In 2013, the Becket Fund joined with major Catholic groups in sponsoring the so-called Manhattan Declaration, signers of which avow that they will “civilly disobey” laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
The Becket Fund was founded in 1994 by a former Reagan administration Justice Department lawyer who worked under future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
The group is named for Saint Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II until he was murdered by followers of the King in the year 1170.
Outside of LGBTQ issues, the Becket Fund is best known for winning cases on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby.
Scottie's Playtime 
You know, what I don’t get is how they scream “faith” (which has a definition) and “religious beliefs” (belief also has a definition and I have a point coming as to my observations of those words,) yet they’re afraid of their kids, who they claim to be raising to share their “faith” and “belief”, being exposed to some sort of something that the parents don’t hold with. Well.
Either they have faith and they believe, or they don’t, and that’s on them and they should work that out with their religious deity. And either they’re raising their kids to share their faith and belief, or they’re not, and that’s on them, too, not on the schools and educational materials. More than one concept can occupy a human brain at the same time, after it’s reached an age of comprehension, without damaging any of the concepts. I grew up believing in God, and learning about science didn’t take away from that. Learning very complicated theories and how they were compiled only increased my appreciation of God’s grace in giving people the ability to learn and share what they learned. It didn’t negate God. For me. I’m not proselytizing, which I know regular readers know, but I want to make clear just to cover that base.
I don’t get why these people don’t remember that. It’s as if they don’t recall their own childhoods, how they learned, or anything. This stuff isn’t new-it didn’t only recently come about. If they don’t like it, they should make sure their kids know what they expect from their kids. Just like in the early 70s: some girls put out, some didn’t, mostly based upon what their families expected. (I use that example because I was a girl then and I know that to be a fact.)
Sheesh. I guess I’m just going off here. We all already know this stuff. Sorry!
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Hi Ali. They say that because it is not about controlling their own kids at a young age even though the data shows that most of the older kids of fundamentalist parents leave their parent’s faith for a more accepting one, or leave religion altogether. This is entirely about preventing ALL kids from reading that material, reading those books, seeing those TV shows, and they dread the kids watch those accepting videos and it changes the young person’s mind from the bigotry and hate. It is about forcing their views on all kids, regardless of other parents views or religion. They demand the right to control entire schools when they are the minority in those areas. That is what the guy who co-wrote the “don’t say gay bill” admitted here in Florida. It made him weep when he saw LGBTQ+ kids accepted by the other students. He wanted them targeted and beaten back in to hiding who they were. He was a fundamentalist Christian.
This is because they are terrified of the progressive way society has gone throughout history, so they believe the easiest and best way to stop it is to force public schools starting at the youngest ages to follow their church dictates, stop all anti-bullying programs to help the LGBTQ+, and to remove any representation of the LGBTQ+ at any age in schools. Just knowing the existence of the fact some people are different from cis straight being acknowledge is an offense to them at this point. They demand a returned to the 1950s to please them over all other parents. That is how much power they think they have over the schools. Other parents must really fight back on this. We all must fight back.
Interesting that in the deep south when religious groups tried to take over of school boards the next election the nonreligious not bigoted people took back those boards. These religious people have to realize they are not the majority and they get into power by subversive means like running as democrats then changing once getting elected or running claiming one thing and changing once elected. Deception in the name of their god is not lying it is allowed to further his will?
I am normally so tolerant of others beliefs and faith as long as it harms no one, these people violate that on a large scale. Hugs
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