On Friday, the Supreme Court clobbered perhaps America’s most aggressive and intolerant LGBTQ+ school indoctrination program. By a vote of 6 to 3 in the case of Mahmoud v.Taylor, the court upheld parents’ right to exempt their children from biased sex and gender lessons that violated their religious values. The court’s ruling is a bitter reminder that public education is the most expensive “gift” that most Americans will ever receive.
Montgomery County, Maryland is the most liberal turf in one of the most liberal states in the nation. The Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) system prides itself on injecting progressive values into its 116,000 students. MCPS launched a gender-sex education program beginning in pre-kindergarten. The mandate was wildly unpopular with parents. The program initially offered an opt-out option—similar to what almost every other school system in the nation offers. But after too many parents signaled they wanted their kids out, the county canceled the opt-out. County bureaucrats sounded like antebellum plantation owners complaining about too many runaway slaves. An organization representing Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic parents sued the school system. Their goal was not to prohibit the controversial textbooks but to exempt their kids from the indoctrination.
I live in Montgomery County and I have heard the anguish over this policy from foreign-born Uber drivers with children in local schools. Those Uber contractors came to this nation to pursue the American dream and are horrified to see how teachers are becoming deadly enemies of their family values and of their children’s contentment with their own bodies. When the drivers implore me to explain the local school policy, I can only lament that “crazy as a loon” doesn’t translate.
In 2019, the state of Maryland issued regulations to promote “viewing each student’s” “gender identity and expression,” and “sexual orientation” as “valuable.” Government officials and political appointees arrogated to themselves the prerogative to redefine gender in the state of Maryland. In choosing books for the curriculum, the MCPS Board said it “would review options through an ‘LGBTQ+ Lens’ and ask whether books ‘reinforced or disrupted’ ‘stereotypes,’ ‘cisnormativity,’ and ‘power hierarchies,’” according to a court brief filed by parents. That brief also noted that “teachers are told to frame disagreement with [pro-LGBTQ] ideas as ‘hurtful,’ and to counter with examples of ‘men who paint their nails’ or ‘wear dresses.’ The guidance documents also instruct teachers—twice—to ‘disrupt the either/or thinking’ of elementary students about biological sex.” The goal is to instill in children “a new perspective not easily contravened by their parents,” as the MCPS Board admitted.
In 2020, MCPS reported a 500 percent increase in the number of black and Hispanic kids failing math thanks in part to pointless covid school shutdowns. But that was a trifle compared to the 582 percent increase in the number of kids self-identifying as “non-binary” in local schools. “Disrupting children’s thinking” has been so successful that school medical intake forms indicate that almost half of students identified themselves as non-binary. MCPS justifies keeping young kids’ gender transitions secret in order to protect children from their own parents.
No data has been disclosed on how many of those students have been swayed to take puberty blockers that will leave them barren for life—even though most kids who have gender doubts later accept what they were born with. There is no data on how many females have had double mastectomies or how many boys have had genital-altering surgery. Non-binary kids are far more likely to suffer mental illness, but the schools did not disclose any data on how their crusade boosted the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs. One survey found that more than half of transgender and non-binary youth considered committing suicide in 2022.
No wonder the parents’ lawsuit complained that MCPS promoted “political ideologies about family life and human sexuality that are inconsistent with sound science, common sense, and the well-being of children.”
A few decades ago, supposedly only reactionaries objected to public schools providing sex education. If such “lessons” had been limited to how to avoid pregnancy and venereal disease, then there would have been little or no harm or controversy. But that became the camel’s nose in the tent. Sex education became obsessed with redefining gender and radically changing how kids viewed themselves and American society.
In order to mold kids’ values, Montgomery County schools destroyed the innocence of childhood by placing a massive focus on sex starting at age 3. Encouraging kids to doubt their gender and sexual orientation before puberty can blight their lives. Even the local association of school principals vehemently objected to the program, finding it “problematic to portray elementary school age children falling in love with other children, regardless of sexual preferences.” Principals also opposed books and programs that “support the explicit teaching of gender and sexual identity”; invite “shaming comments” toward students who disagree, and are “dismissive of religious beliefs,” according to a court brief. Pro-LGBTQ+ advocates have provided no evidence on the benefits of encouraging kids to torment themselves about their own gender for years before they reach puberty. It doesn’t take 10 years of indoctrination to sway teenage boys to lust for female bosoms.
This case epitomizes how “free” schools subjugate parents and other taxpayers. When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on this case, Justice Jackson scoffed: “If the school teaches something that the parent disagrees with, you have a choice. You don’t have to send your kid to that school, you can put them in another situation.” But many of the parents objecting cannot afford either private schools or homeschooling their kids.
Justice Samuel Alito—writing for the court majority—declared,
A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses “a very real threat of undermining” the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill… And a government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction.
Most parents pay taxes that could cover much if not all of the cost of their kids’ schooling. Parents’ rights vanish as soon as their tax dollar is deposited into government coffers. Paying for schooling indirectly turns parents from buyers into beggars. Public schools vivify how control over financing for a service leads to political controls over people’s lives. Justice Alito scoffed at the three Justices who opposed the opt-out: “According to the dissent, parents who send their children to public school must endure any instruction that falls short of direct compulsion or coercion and must try to counteract that teaching at home.” As long as government officials don’t strap children into their chairs and directly use electronic mind zappers, progressives assume officialdom hasn’t gone too far.
The Supreme Court made the right call in upholding parents’ right to opt-out their kids. But how did government schools ever become so arrogant as to claim a right to determine what each child thought about personal, moral, and religious issues? The power of government schools remains a dire threat to parents, children, and to the future of liberty.
