WASHINGTON, DC — Should parents have the right to opt their elementary-aged children out of mandatory public school curriculum that promotes alternative ideas about gender and sexuality?

In a joint amicus brief in Mahmoud v. Taylor, The Rutherford Institute and the NC Values Institute have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm the right of parents from various religious backgrounds to be granted a religious exemption to opt their elementary-aged children out of required readings and discussions of books involving LGBTQ sexuality and themes. This included students in pre-Kindergarten and Head Start classrooms. One of the adopted books is Pride Puppy!, which teaches the alphabet to three- and four-year-old children by following the path of a puppy that gets lost in an LGBTQ pride parade. The children learn the alphabet by finding terms in the parade that correspond to letters in the alphabet. The list of terms includes controversial and sexual terms such as “[drag] queen,” “[drag] king,” “leather,” “lip ring,” “underwear,” and “intersex.”

“Despite the government’s attitude that it knows best, public school students are not wards of the state, to do with as government officials decree,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The harm caused by attitudes and policies that treat young people as state vassals is not merely a short-term deprivation of individual rights. It also reflects the disconcerting view that civil liberties—including religious freedom—may be discarded at the caprice of government officials. Yet as the Supreme Court acknowledged, the child is not the mere creature of the state. As such, parents should not be expected to forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school.”

The case arose in Maryland after the Montgomery County Board of Education adopted several “LGBTQ-Inclusive Books” as part of its English curriculum in October 2022. Among the required books are Pride Puppy!, which teaches the alphabet to three- and four-year-old children by following the path of a puppy that gets lost in an LGBTQ pride parade; Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, about a transgender boy; and Prince and Knight, which includes a romance between two male characters. In addition to the inclusion of “LGBTQ-Inclusive Books,” the school board included guidance for teachers on how to respond to questions or comments. The guidance advises teachers to “disrupt the either/or thinking” of students who disagree with LGBTQ relationships. It also counsel teachers to respond to questions about being transgender by stating that “our body parts do not decide our gender. Our gender comes from our inside.”

Originally, the school board allowed religious parents to request an exemption from their children being taught with this material. However, on March 23, 2023, the board reversed its decision and removed parents’ ability to opt out their children from this instruction. The parents are not challenging the school’s use of the books. They are simply seeking to regain the opportunity to remove their children from teaching that contradicts their religious beliefs. In asking the Supreme Court to reverse a ruling by the Fourth Circuit that refused to grant the parents a preliminary injunction, Institute attorneys argue that the lack of an opt-out provision unlawfully forces parents to choose between raising their children in accordance with their religious convictions or giving them a free public education.

Attorney Deborah J. Dewart advanced the arguments in the Mahmoud v. Taylor amicus brief.

Mahmoud v. Taylor

• Amicus Brief

Article posted with permission from John Whitehead