The logic of fucked in the head Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s fucked in the head opinion in the 6-3 decision in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor is it’s wrong that LGBTQ+ people exist and it’s wrong that they deserve happiness. The six conservative fucknuts, using the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religious worship, say that it’s wrong if a school district allows books with LGBTQ+ characters in their classroom libraries and it’s wrong if the teacher is going to read the book aloud. Also, the school has to allow the parents to opt out their precious little pure angels or they might be taught the horrors of life in a diverse culture. It’s so dumb and so backwards that it’s an insult to teachers, to religion, to the Constitution, and it is of a piece with the majority’s infantilization of the population in their decisions.
Without going into the whole case, here’s a quick summary: “Montgomery County’s school system expanded its English Language Arts curriculum in 2022 to include books with LGBTQ+ characters, part of an effort to better reflect the diversity of families in the county’s religiously diverse and politically liberal population… A coalition of parents from a variety of religious backgrounds — Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic — protested the curriculum updates, and three couples and the organization Kids First sued the district. The parents said they were not trying to change the lesson plans or remove any books from classroom shelves. They just wanted to have the option of saying their children would not participate.”
Now, there’s a part of me that says, “Well, fuck it. They should have just let the kids of the stupid parents sit out.” And the school district did have a policy allowing that, but they stopped allowing it. Why? Well, because there was no requirement to teach the books that the parents had an issue with. And the books themselves? Alito goes to great pains to portray them as these evil texts that will hinder the “religious development” of their kids. In his drama queen way, Princess Alito says, “We reject this chilling vision of the power of the state to strip away the critical right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.”
And what’s causing this chilling vision? One of the books is Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, where Chloe, a little girl, learns her favorite uncle, Bobby, is getting married to his boyfriend, Jamie. Chloe doesn’t give a shit that Bobby’s gay. She gives a shit and is upset because Bobby is the party uncle who does all kinds of fun stuff with her. It’s a story that has been told a million times, and the only difference here is the couple is gay. Chloe learns marriage doesn’t mean Bobby will stop being Bobby, and so they have a party. But that’s the sinister part for Alito, who really writes that the wedding “is presented as a joyous event that is met with universal approval… there are many Americans who would view the event that way, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. But other Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”
So, in other words, the simple existence of a gay couple, and, believe it or not, they do exist, and the fact that they experience joy, which, I can confirm, they do, is an abomination to people who believe in a certain kind of invisible sky wizard, who will be very angry if you accept the gays. It’s absurd. And it gets stupider (and stick with me, because the stupid will reach a crescendo in a moment).
Another book, Intersection Allies (a terrible title that makes my teeth hurt, to be honest), is filled with people who are different from regular ol’ middle class white kids. It’s got a kid in a wheelchair, a kid whose family speaks Spanish, a poor kid, an Muslim kid, and a bunch of others, including a transgender kid. It’s like one page of the book, and the whole thing is about having compassion for the different types of people a child in the 21st century might meet or even have in their class. But, once again, Alito is having none of it: “The book and the accompanying discussion guidance present as a settled matter a hotly contested view of sex and gender that sharply conflicts with the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children.” Yeah, but what about the religious beliefs of the parent who are letting their transgender 7 year-old express their gender identity? Don't those beliefs or lack of beliefs matter?
To put it simply, conservative religious beliefs trump everything else in the majority’s reasoning. As several commentators have pointed out, this could lead to complete anarchy. Should Mormons and Muslims be able to opt out of readings that involve drinking alcohol? Should people who belong to racist religious sects be allowed to opt out of learning about slavery? What if they’re reading a book about a woman president and that offends the sexist fundamentalists in various faiths? It’s all fucking ridiculous, and to avoid a total clusterfuck of dickhead parents allowing their prejudices to dictate the curriculum, most schools will just avoid anything but the most anodyne shit. You might wonder why the hell don’t the kids just go to religious schools, ah, but Alito says that because the families are too poor to afford that, it’s on the rest of us to affirm their crazy.
Students can learn shit in school that they don't agree with. Parents have a right to teach their ignorance to their kids. Alito's just worried the kids will think the ignorant parents are fucked in the head like him and that their religious development is worthless. Yet Alito is saying that the parents’ religion takes precedence over everyone else’s right to not have religion imposed on them.
It’s something that Justice Sonia Sotomayor states pretty fucking clearly in her dissent. She quotes the First Amendment and emphasizes that “prohibit” is the key word: “The Clause prohibits the government from compelling individuals, whether directly or indirectly, to give up or violate their religious beliefs.” In other words, the government can’t force you to believe a certain way. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn shit.
Sotomayor remarks that the majority’s decision fails “to accept and account for a fundamental truth: LGBTQ people exist. They are part of virtually every community and workplace of any appreciable size. Eliminating books depicting LGBTQ individuals as happily accepted by their families will not eliminate student exposure to that concept. Nor does the Free Exercise Clause require the government to alter its programs to insulate students from that ‘message.’” Right. Your stupid fucking parents and your dumbass church can teach you, say, all the creationism you want. But get that ludicrous shit out of the public school science classroom.
But some of you may still be stuck on the whole “Fuck it. Let the poor religion-abused kids stay home on LGBTQ day. The district should just reinstitute its policy of opt out.” Except there is a policy in place that the parents in this case could have used, which Sotomayor mentions: "Rather than avail themselves of the district’s established process for challenging objectionable instructional material, petitioners sued the MCPS Board in federal court.”
And this is the crescendo of the stupid. Yeah, the parents had options. But right-wing groups, like the odious Moms for Liberty, got their legal claws in this and wanted to get the frothing mongrels in robes on the high court to put us further on the road to their Christian nationalist vision for the country. Alito even quotes the local leader of MFL as if she’s just an interested parent: “Some parents showed up at the [Montgomery County School] Board’s public business meetings to express their concerns about the storybooks’ content. In an early 2023 meeting, for example, one parent represented herself as ‘a voice for parents in [her] community, many of [whom] are actually working today and unable to attend.’” That concerned mom was Lindsey Smith, head of the Montgomery County chapter of the maniac Moms. She’s also testified before Congress about how terrible it is to tell kids that gay people are real.
And there you have it. The set up. The lawsuit. The pay off. A successful attack on LGBTQ people, as well as on the education of students based in reality and not some backwards-ass fantasy world that they want to use to subjugate the rest of us, all under guise of supporting the Constitution that the majority ignores like it’s a homeless queer kid on the streets of DC.
How ridiculous is this? Here’s Alito: “In making this argument, the dissent seems to confuse our country with those in which laws enacted by a parliament or another legislative body cannot be challenged in court. In this country, that is not so. Here, the Bill of Rights and the doctrine of judicial review protect individuals who cannot obtain legislative change.” And this was on the same day they said that courts should not be allowed to do national injunctions.
