Supreme Court story time: Justices consider children's books with LGBTQ+ themes
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Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland's largest school system, added the books in 2022 to the curriculum for students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. The school system's list included, its lawyers told the justices, 'a handful of storybooks featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer characters for use in the language-arts curriculum, alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles.'
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At first, the Montgomery school system gave parents notice when the storybooks were to be discussed, along with the opportunity to have their children excused from those sessions. But the school system soon eliminated the advanced notice and opt-out policy, saying it was hard to administer, led to absenteeism, and risked 'exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation.'
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Parents of several faiths sued, saying the books violated the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion. The books, their complaint said, 'promote one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning and focus excessively on romantic infatuation.'
The parents said they did not seek to remove the books from school libraries and classrooms but only to shield their children from having to discuss them. (The school system has since withdrawn two of the seven books, including 'Pride Puppy.' In court papers, officials said the books had been reevaluated under standard procedures but did not elaborate.)
Billy Moges, a member of Kids First, an association of parents and teachers that is a plaintiff in the case, said in an interview that the books were 'teaching things that are exactly in contradiction with what we believe in.'
'It steals their innocence,' she said of the impact the books have on children. 'It destroys the foundation that they have, the structure of who they are, in God and in our faith. And it just makes absolutely no sense. It just defies common sense.'
Moges said she has withdrawn her three young children from public schools and has sent them to a private one that she helped found that would, she said, 'not brainwash kids with these ideas.'
Still, she said, 'I want to send my kids back to Montgomery County schools because we don't have the resources that they do.'
Jodie Patterson, author of 'Born Ready,' said she was flummoxed by the controversy. 'My initial reaction was, 'My little book? How is that harming anyone?''
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Her book, about a transgender boy who wins a karate tournament with the support of his family and a school principal, was well received when it was published in 2021. Kirkus Reviews said it 'shines with joy and affirmation' and amounted to 'a triumphant declaration of love and identity.'
On reflection, Patterson said she felt the parents' objections amounted to erasing the experiences of some families. 'When certain religions and certain religious people say, 'This is not appropriate for my religion,'' she said, 'it's problematic.'
'Not because I don't want to respect people's religions,' she went on, 'but because reading stories about children who are different is fundamental.'
In recent cases, the Supreme Court has expanded the role of religion in public life, sometimes at the expense of other values such as gay rights.
The court has ruled in favor of a web designer who said she did not want to create sites for same-sex marriages, a high school football coach who said he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team's games, and a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia that said it could defy city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples who had applied to take in foster children.
Some legal scholars said that accepting the logic of the Maryland parents' arguments would have broad consequences for the ability of public schools to manage their curricula, citing cases in which parents unsuccessfully challenged course materials on evolution and the big bang theory, and storybooks about wizards and giants.
'The First Amendment does not shield public school students from the mere exposure to ideas that conflict with their personal views, whether secular or religious,' Justin Driver of Yale Law School and Eugene Volokh of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University wrote in a brief supporting the school system.
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The school board, in its Supreme Court brief in the case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, No. 24-297, wrote that the dispute was based on a misunderstanding about what lessons students are intended to draw from the books.
'The storybooks themselves do not instruct about gender or sexuality,' the brief said. 'They are not textbooks. They merely introduce students to characters who are LGBTQ or have LGBTQ family members, and those characters' experiences and points of view.'
The books supplement rather than replace other children's stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Goldilocks, which, the brief noted, also depict families, communities, and relationships.
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