‘Tough Case To Argue’: SCOTUS Poised To Back Parental Opt-Out For LGBT Content In School

A majority of Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared to be in favor of backing parents’ rights to opt their children out of explicit LGBT content in schools during oral arguments in a Maryland religious liberty case.

The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, revolved around Muslim, Christian, and Jewish parents from Montgomery County, Maryland. The county school board would not allow these parents to remove their elementary school children from portions of class actively advocating for things like gay marriage, trans-identifying children, pride parades, and the idea that a child can change his “gender identity” at any given moment.

Attorneys for the county board are claiming the purpose of the instruction was to simply engender “inclusivity,” and that the children who were being exposed to the material, ranging from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade, were only being shown that gay “marriages” exist. But that narrative was swiftly cut down by questioning from Justice Samuel Alito to parents’ attorney Eric Baxter, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

“It has a clear moral message,” Alito said of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, one of the books in question, which the justice said he has read. “And it may be a good message. It’s just a message that a lot of religious people disagree with. … I don’t think anybody can read that and say, ‘Well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men.’”

Alito pointed out that while every character in the book was excited and supporting the gay wedding, the only character “who has reservations about it,” a little girl named Chloe, was quickly corrected for her wrong thought and told she should have zero reservations at all. (Read more from “‘Tough Case To Argue’: SCOTUS Poised To Back Parental Opt-Out For LGBT Content In School” HERE)