Court of Appeals: Maryland Parents Can’t Opt-Out K-5 Kids from Public School LGBTQ Curriculum
From the dissent: This ruling “forces the parents to make a choice—either adhere to their faith or receive a free public education for their children. They cannot do both.”
A federal court of appeals just held, in a 2-1 ruling, that Maryland parents cannot opt out of required LGBTQ grade school curriculum that exposes their kids as young as kindergarten to concepts like “intersex flag,” “drag queen,” “leather,” and other topics associated with the LGBTQ community.
Fox News has the story: Parents can’t opt K-5 children out of LGBTQ curriculum: appeals court:
Maryland’s largest school district does not have to allow parents to opt their K-5 children out of classes and books that discuss LGBTQ topics like sexuality and gender, at least for now, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday.
The 2-1 ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision denying a preliminary injunction on the basis that the parents had not shown how the policy — initiated by the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) board — would violate their children’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
The parents had argued that refusal to provide an opt-out from their children’s exposure to LGBT-themed books and related discussions violates federal and state law.
The Plaintiffs are three sets of religiously observant parents, one Muslim and two Christian, who believe that the LGBT-themed books are harmful to their kids because it interferes with their religious upbringing. And how could it not, as it exposes kindergarteners, among other things, to a book entitled “The Pride Puppy” with drawings of drag queens performing on a stage, a cart with vegetables inside with a sign labeled “queer farmers,” and “an image of a celebrated LGBTQ activist and sex worker, ‘Marsha P. Johnson.'”
Incidentally, you can read innumerable glowing life stories about Johnson, who apparently was indeed a sex worker, or what we used to call a prostitute, i.e. someone who gets paid cash money to perform various sex acts with total strangers. Apparently Johnson was born male but “enjoyed wearing clothes made for women“, and is now celebrated like some kind of Mother Theresa. See:
- Life Story: Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992): Transgender Activist: The story of a transgender activist who participated in the Stonewall Uprising and fought for equal rights
- Marsha P. Johnson: The Transgender Activist Who Pioneered the Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights
You get the idea.
Anyway, back to Fox News and religious parents being forced to let their kids be exposed to outrageously inappropriate material in school:
Some of the book titles include “The Pride Puppy,” “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding [if you think Uncle Bobby is marrying a woman, you’d be wrong]” and “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope.”
The parents argued that the books contradict their religious duty to train their children in accordance with their faith on “what it means to be male and female; the institution of marriage; human sexuality; and related themes….”
However, the court ruled that the mere exposure to ideas contrary to one’s faith is not enough of a burden to implicate the First Amendment and that exposure to issues that one disagrees with, even for religious reasons, is “part of the compromise parents make when choosing to send their children to public schools,” the ruling states.
You can review this awful ruling, if have the stomach for it, here.
The only bright light in this dismal ruling is that it was on appeal from the denial of a motion for preliminary injunction, i.e. a motion at the very start of the case, which asks the judge to stop the government from doing something before evidence is gathered, principals are deposed, etc. This means that while the court isn’t stopping the [extremely] objectionable practices right now, it might later:
“We take no view on whether the Parents will be able to present evidence sufficient to support any of their various theories once they have the opportunity to develop a record as to the circumstances surrounding the Board’s decision and how the challenged texts are actually being used in schools,” U.S. Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee, a President George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the majority in the opinion.
“At this early stage, however, given the Parents’ broad claims, the very high burden required to obtain a preliminary injunction, and the scant record before us, we are constrained to affirm the district court’s order denying a preliminary injunction.”
The other sliver of good news is that there was a dissent in the case:
U.S. Circuit Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr., who was appointed by former President Trump, dissented, writing that he disagreed with the district court motion finding the parents failed to establish that the board burdened their First Amendment rights.
“The parents have shown the board’s decision to deny religious opt-outs burdened these parents’ right to exercise their religion and direct the religious upbringing of their children by putting them to the choice of either compromising their religious beliefs or foregoing a public education for their children,” Quattlebaum wrote.
“I also find that the board’s actions, at least under this record, were neither neutral nor generally applicable. Finally, I find the parents have established the other requirements for a preliminary injunction. So, I would reverse the district court and enjoin the Montgomery County School Board of Education from denying religious opt-outs for instruction to K-5 children involving the texts.”
Once again we see the utterly overwhelming importance of electing President Trump to another term this fall. Over and over we have seen Trump-appointed judges saying no to the seemingly relentless advance of the leftist agenda.
The Constitution really is our last line of defense, but if judges aren’t going to uphold it, what the heck good is it?
Tell everyone you know to register to vote and to get out there and vote in November.
And while I don’t normally editorialize in my posts because I am a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of guy, I can’t tell you how much this disgusts me. Introducing kindergarteners to ANY sexualized material is the very definition of evil, but to introduce them to the concept of drag queens and that ilk is beyond evil, and you don’t have to be religious to understand that. Leave the kids alone for God sakes.
And, if you can afford to, homeschool your kids. No way in hell I’d have sent my daughter to Montgomery County public schools. No way in hell.
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Comments
I’d say parents should just ignore the court but the kids will not pass so looks like they have no choice but to opt out the public school system, unless ever parent boycotts the schools? If the fat worthless overpaid public union leach teachers can strike, how about the parents and kids do the same?
Montco – who knew.
This court as represented by these judges in question is evil. Sinful.
It is not just this issue, today’s public schools are worse than useless. In my opinion they are not salvageable. Universal public education is dead.
Public schools are paid by taxpayers! Therefore tax payers should have a say on the curriculum and opt outs! The schools belong to the people!!! Boycott!!!
When you take the King’s coin you must dance to the King’s tune.
Long live King Muh Democracy!
We are at WAR
Prepare accordingly
Against whom? The blacks? The gays? The “muzzies?”
Good Lord take a Valium you dingbat.
corrupt judges, from Engoron to Roberts!
It’s incredible that there are still people out there so stupid that they don’t understand we are in fact at war. Yet here you are.
Thad Jarvis would sell his mother into prostitution before he said anything bad about Marxists.
His father, you transphobe.
“Against whom?”
Against Leftist assholes like you, dingleberry.
You’re gonna hate being made to play by your own Antifa rules.
If the parents have to make such a choice, despite the clearly written First Amendment of the Constitution, then they should be absolved of paying the school tax portion of their tax bill.
We have been paying twice for education for too long.
Besides, transgenderism is a state sponsored religion (cult).
I don’t have children and I am forced to pay TONS in property/school taxes for curricula that I find worse than offensive (and is less than par on the subjects that school is actually for). I am being ripped off and abused at least as much as any parents are. I have to pay the equivalent of a rental fee on my own private property for my district to build junk schools (wasting tons of money on the actual construction and related ancillaries) to teach perverted nonsense to children – all of which I vehemently disagree with.
The government is no more allowed to force me to fund this sort of deranged perversion (through takings of MY property) than it is allowed to force parents to subject their children to it.
And then you’re told you have no right to voice and opinion about the schools you fund because you don’t have children attending those schools
If you ever have some free time and are interested in what the creators of ‘public education’ intended, a good place to start would be with Horace Mann, widely believed to be the ‘father of public education’ in the US. Mann believed that it was critical that public (also called ‘common’ at the time) education should not only be generally moral, but the school necessarily ‘inculcates all Christian morals.’ Additionally, Mann’s schools all had Bibles for the children to use…and study. He said about the practice: ‘…our system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible; and in receiving the Bible, it allows it to do what is allowed to do in no other system,—to speak for itself.
What would Mann say about our contemporary education with its indoctrination of secular humanism and the pervasive sexual deviance that permeates public schools at every grade level.
Yes, Horace Mann helped establish the idea that the education of children should be run by government bureaucrats. We are dealing with the disastrous result.
Get the kids out now.
The education system that Mann created served the Republic INCREDIBLY well for more than 150-years. 30-years after slavery was abolished, the literacy rate among black Americans is believed to have been more than 70% (higher than it is in Detroit today). It wasn’t until the counter-culture, free-love movement of the 1960s did public education begin to fail in disastrous ways. Before then, America had become the global leader it technological innovation and had established one of the highest literacy rates in the free world due entirely to the excellence of public education.
Mindless platitudes like ‘get the kids out’ are laughably ignorant of the economic reality of most Americans, particularly in today’s economy. Last month, Payroll.com reported that 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck (a record number in the history of that survey). People can’t afford private education and for the great majority of people, homeschooling is not an option. Get a grip.
You realize those living paycheck are the same ones paying for the public schools? And you have looked at the test scores from the urban public shools that indicate few learn anything. The quicker that the public school system is abolished the quicker we can begin to recover from its evil.
Falsehoods and insults!
The government schools didn’t work “INCREDIBLY well” for Catholics, whose children were indoctrinated into Protestantism by the state using their parents tax money.
Many parents don’t have the wherewithal to use private schools, homeschool, or move to a state with school choice (I moved, and I’m far from wealthy), but many parents do and aren’t willing to go to the trouble.
The article demonstrates that 1) the government schools are harmful, and 2) they are implacably resistant to change. And even if they “reformed” they would still be indoctrinating children in worldviews contrary to that of their parents. Education is inseparable from worldview.
Get a grip yourself.
it doesnt change that correct fact
get your kids out get yuor money out of public schools
come on gop write those laws
PAY TEACHERS DIRECTLY
no more unions no more “special guests” at your childrens schools or bathrooms
the ends DONT justify the means
John Taylor Gatto, former New York state (public) Teacher of the Year:
—Underground History of American Education: A
Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling
“By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent”
How did that happen? Public school. While the white, colonial ancestors of 19th century America were almost totally literate, what happened in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century? Massive influx of non-English-speaking immigrants. Where did the children of those immigrants learn to read? Public schools, just like the freed slaves. Absent access to quality, FREE education, a great number of those children never would have learned English much less been literate in the language.
henrybowman: Excellent comment!
Here’s another quotation:
I’ve always required my students to read the Federalist Papers and they tell me it makes stimulating reading. But they say it’s the most difficult thing they’ve ever had to read in their entire academic careers. I can’t resist the Opportunity to comment on that a little bit. I usually tell them that there’s a reason they find it difficult.
The Federalist Papers were written for a very elite audience—the farmers of 18th century New York—to encourage them to support the Constitution. I tell my students: “You can’t expect to equal the farmers of 18th century New York because you’ve had twelve years of schooling here and some of you have been stunted still further by four years in a university. But if you really pull yourselves up by the boot straps, you might be able to remotely approach the level of academic sophistication of the farmers of 18th century New York.” Some of my students come close.
John Eidsmoe, Professor of Constitutional Law
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2041235/posts
TargaGTS: You keep using the word “FREE”. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
It sounds like you have a personal stake in perpetuating our system of education by government bureaucracy.
In past threads I have advocated ballot measures to disband school districts. I still hold the same belief.
Pretty insane
It’s true, we are paying to destroy our country, our very children
It will take a revolution
I pray President Trump stays safe, wins despite the cheating and disbands the board of education
I guess that would be the the Department of Education
Which would have no effect whatsoever on the topic of this post.
Property taxes are more than 85% for schools in most districts, and they are SKY HIGH!!! It is well past time to end public schooling. The government(s) cannot be trusted with educating children. There are too many deranged perverts in various government positions. Most of them need to be taken out of society and imprisoned, but until then the whole idea of “public education” being supported by insanely high property taxes that turn private property into nothing but rentals from the government NEEDS TO END.
One more tell-tale sign of the lefts hymn: “we’re coming for your children.”
“Children learning about issues they disagree with is ‘part of the compromise parents make when choosing to send their children to public schools’, they wrote.”
But this is much more than just learning about issues. It is demanding the children form a certain view or risk failing the class. We know this because material is never presented in a neutral manner. If it was there would be no requirement for class discussion, reports, exams, and other means of determining how well the students retained the material.
This is not “read aloud” time where a student could very well just tune out the material and not suffer a lower grade for not grasping the relationship between Fern and Wilbur.
That the judges dismiss this as parents not wanting their children exposed to ideas contrary to their faith shows an alarming ignorance. Every time those children step outside their home they are exposed to a wide variety of ideas not embraced by their religion or culture. What they are not exposed to is people in authority over them insisting they reject those teaching and affirm those that tell them their beliefs are wrong,bigoted, outmoded, even evil. and a danger to others.
Some of us warned decades ago where the logical progression of ‘tolerance’ was going to lead, and were called fearmongers and homophobes.
Conservatives accepted the ridiculous premise that the ONLY acceptable legal reason to object to the LGTBQDSFV:CSLKDJRB was religion.
And now, exactly as predicted, the leftists are removing religion as an acceptable legal objection.
This was NEVER about ‘tolerance’. It was about shoving it down everybody’s throats, and they were always targeting the children.
As they do with many other words, leftists have defined “religion” as any worldview other than their own. I’m not sure how many of them actually believe that. The ones who do are wrong, The ones who don’t but act as if they do are profoundly wicked.
“….. and that exposure to issues that one disagrees with, even for religious reasons, is “part of the compromise parents make when choosing to send their children to public schools,” the ruling states.”
I didn’t realize a compromise is in place. How did the public education system compromise for the parents?
////
Using their “logic”, schools could teach a class that states God does not exist and people who claim to believe in God are both dangerous and evil. Students would have to affirm that position to get a passing grade.
HORACE MANN
Mann faced some resistance from parents who did not want to give up the moral education to teachers and bureaucrats. The normal schools trained mostly women, giving them new career opportunities as teachers.[21] Mann believed that women were better suited for teaching, regardless of their status as a mother, and used his position to push for a feminization of the profession.[22]
SO HE LED THE GOVERNMENT OVER THE PARENTS MOVEMENT
using the power of the Church as his foundation
This is why the Left is against vouchers.
In Montgomery County, someone as liberal as Bernie Sanders would be closer to William F. Buckley than the average resident. That is to say that there are some places in the United States that are downright insane.
Public school should have nothing whatsoever to say about sexuality outside of basic human anatomy & physiology. For the MoCo schools to be advocating for this kind of depravity is truly evil.
This is where we get to when our concept of Natural Rights (ie. God-given rights,) the basis of our Constitution is forgotten and abandoned in favor of recognizing only those rights that have protections explicitly stated in that same Constitution.
If we were not bound by the assumption that our rights begin and end with the Bill of Rights, we would understand that the following are all rights that are being currently violated by the very nature of the government school system:
1. The people are compelled to send their children to government schools, or make only government-approved alternative arrangements.
2. The people are compelled to ensure prescribed attendance of their children at those schools or be accountable for truancy.
3. The people are compelled to pay for those government schools, whether or not they send their children to them or even if they have no children.
4. The people are compelled to pay a “property tax” on non-income generating property or suffer forfeiture. This is a clear violation of property rights. As has been elsewhere stated, we no longer own property. We have returned to renting from the “King’s lands.”
It was argued when the Constitution was being debated between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists that an enumeration of rights was unnecessary because it was impossible to name all of the peoples’ rights and leave the impression that their rights were limited to those enumerated. Besides, the powers of the government were explicitly spelled out, and were limited to what was in the Constitution. The 10th amendment was supposed to be the solution for this, a way of attempting to enumerate and yet not enumerate. This clearly did not work.
As I’ve implied, I believe a return to the study and discussion of Natural Rights is badly needed. We clearly no longer have the same understanding of our rights that the founders had.
The Fourth Circus, working diligently to take the #1 Leftist Circus title from the Ninth.
There would be a one in one chance of me pulling my child out of that school if that was the appellate ruling. I’d pay for private at that point.