LEXINGTON, Massachusetts (LifeSiteNews) — A Massachusetts father has won a preliminary injunction against a local school district that had insisted on exposing his five-year-old son to pro-LGBTQ books.
The case pitted a devout Christian father – cited as Alan L., father of J.L. in court documents – against the Lexington Public School District (LPSD) and Joseph Estabrook Elementary School (JEES).
The father objected to the content of certain books concerning sexual themes and contended that his child has been compelled “to participate in classroom instruction that promote[s] sexualized and ideological messages directly contrary to his family’s faith.”
He also contended that as a parent, he had the right to be notified before his son is exposed to objectionable sexual material and to be able to opt his child out of lessons and other classroom activities involving those materials.
Before bringing a civil suit before the court, Alan L. said that his requests to opt his son out of the kindergarten classroom exposure to LGBTQ-themed materials had been repeatedly rejected by the LPSD and JEES.
“Lexington’s refusal came even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision last summer in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that schools must give notice and an opportunity to opt out of content that threatens to undermine parents’ religious beliefs,” noted the Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center (MLLC), which, in conjunction with the American Center for Law and Justice, represented the kindergartner’s dad.
Dad Alan L. said that on September 16, J.L. was shown a “read-aloud” video of the book Families, Families, Families! by Suzanne Lang in his health class.
“He viewed that lesson as ‘directly contradict[ing] [his] religious beliefs,’ and it occurred ‘despite [his] explicit opt-out request,’ according to the court. The boy allegedly was exposed to at least one similarly-themed book, titled All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penford.
“As a result of the district’s actions, J.L. has been exposed to moral instruction about marriage, sexuality, and family that directly contradicts the biblical teachings in which [his] family believes,” wrote the court. “This has required Alan to ‘be prepared to discuss sensitive topics related to sexuality, marriage, and family structures much earlier than [he] wanted or believe[s] is appropriate for [his] child’s age and maturity level.”
Boston’s U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV ordered both the school district and the school where J.L. attends kindergarten to “make reasonable efforts to ensure that [the boy] is not taught or otherwise exposed to the content of the Identified Books, whether in the classroom or any other school setting.”
“This order represents a massive win for parents across the Commonwealth,” declared MLLC. “Public school districts will now be on notice that playing fast-and-loose with parental rights will expose them to significant liability.”
The order given by the court is a preliminary injunction, halting the current ongoing harm against kindergartner J.L. and his family while the lawsuit works its way through the court system.
“If we ultimately succeed in this lawsuit or reach a settlement, Lexington could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees. And schools will be advised that the responsibility is on them, not on parents, to identify materials in their curriculum that could burden a family’s expressed religious beliefs,” noted the attorney group.
“To our knowledge, this is the first case on the issue of curriculum opt-out rights anywhere in the country since the Mahmoud ruling,” continued MLLC. “It is highly significant that the Court here clarified that schools cannot place the burden on parents to identify every specific material they object to, which was a question left open by Mahmoud.”
In its landmark Mahmoud v. Taylor decision last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of parents opting their children out of school lessons featuring pro-LGBT indoctrination, over the objections of a Maryland school board.
