(LifeSiteNews) — It has been a good term for religious freedom at the U.S. Supreme Court, and predictably, LGBT activists are outraged. Their anger, however, reveals how far their crusade to hijack public education has gone and how necessary judicial pushback has become.
Exhibit A is Mahmoud v. Taylor, considered a key test case for parental rights – a concept that many LGBT activists reject entirely. The case centered around Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, which had introduced LGBT books into the pre-kindergarten through Grade 5 curriculum – and, in March 2023, eliminated a policy allowing parents to opt their children out of LGBT lessons.
Led by Tamer Mahmoud, a group of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish families sued the school board generally and Superintendent Thomas Taylor specifically, saying that their First Amendment right to the exercise of religion was being violated because their families were being forcibly exposed to content that directly conflicted with their religious beliefs.
The parents said that the “mandatory exposure” to LGBT material “burdened” their ability to raise their children in their respective faith traditions; the school district countered by claiming the LGBT material were necessary to foster “inclusion” and that permitting parents to opt their children out would disrupt its “educational goals.”
The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the parents on June 27, with Justice Samuel Alito writing for the majority that the policy placed an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ free exercise of religion.
LGBT activist teachers were outraged. In USA Today, Larry Strauss alleged that the parental opt-out right enables religious parents to perpetuate purported “abuse” of LGBT-identifying children and that “some of this abuse is instigated by religious beliefs and influences that make their child’s sexuality a source of torment.” He continued:
I feel for those parents, but I am far more sympathetic to the young men and women who are the subject of the condemnation and alienation. Even in cases where the level of emotional abuse isn’t sufficient to file a report, and with all due respect to the parents, I am compelled to offer emotional support and a voice of acceptance. If narrowing a child’s educational experience in that way is a pillar of religious freedom, does that “freedom” also prevent me or any other teacher from telling an LGBTQ+ student they need not be ashamed of who they are?
To summarize Strauss’s views, albeit in words he carefully did not choose: Children need to be “protected” from the views of parents when parents have religious objections to LGBT ideology, and children should be encouraged to pursue an LGBT lifestyle if they are so inclined. He then compared Mahmoud v. Taylor to the infamous Monkey Scopes trial, comparing LGBT ideology to Darwinism (without irony). Both Darwinism and LGBT ideology, he wrote, are fundamental to a child’s education – and LGBT ideology must be normalized:
Some kids have two moms and some have two dads. Some kids have a transgender parent. Some are being raised by a single parent or grandparent(s) or in a blended family, some kids are being raised by someone with whom they are not related, and still others are being raised by no one at all. Refusing to allow a child to understand and normalize this diversity marginalizes those kids ‒ many of whom are already marginalized by circumstances…
More urgently, books that validate all families and all kids can save the life of a child who realizes they are gay or trans and feels alone and terrified by that realization. The imposition of those books to someone’s faith seems, by comparison, trivial. Pushing back against that imposition seems utterly selfish ‒ ironic for people of faith.
Notice that Strauss claims that the promulgation of his views constitutes neutrality, while faith traditions are genuinely dangerous. The affirmation of LGBT ideology over Christianity is, in his view, necessary to save lives (the longstanding lie of the homosexual and transgender movement); because he believes Christianity to be false and dangerous, he of course concludes that countering its claims in the context of public education is “trivial.” He concludes that “parental power” is “ultimately mostly illusory” – and advocates that their role, when it comes to issues of sexuality, should be ceded to state educators.
A letter to the editor featured in the Washington Post titled “Religious parents can’t opt out of the existence of LGBTQ+ people” made a similar argument against parental rights and in favor of “normalizing” LGBT ideology. In short, because there is a diversity of views on sex and sexuality, the state should emphasize and teach the leftist, anti-Christian view, and thus actively rebut Christianity (and most other major religions) in the classroom for the “safety” of those who embrace LGBT identities. The activists attempt to sound reasonable, but their statements are notably forthright: Christianity is false, and educators have a duty to teach Christian children where it allegedly errs, even prior to kindergarten and even regarding sexuality.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagrees. But for LGBT activists and educators, the masks are off, and their intent is clear. Parents must be on their guard.
