Judges Tell Maryland Moms 4 Liberty To Cry More, More Gay Books For All The Kids!

Also Bethany Mandel, kindly GTFO.

From “Pride Puppy”

Tough tittays for the right-wingers of Montgomery County, Maryland, at least for now: The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals down in Richmond denied 2-1 a temporary injunction in a lawsuit against the school board, Mahmoud v. McKnight, that would have allowed parents to “opt-out” from their children having to sit in a classroom where there are books with LGBTQ+ themes on the shelf.

Also Bethany Mandel, that anti-vax homeschooling mom who struggled to define “woke” and switched her party affiliation to “Democrat” to appear on the ballot, failed to place in the top two and she won’t be on the ballot for Montgomery County school board in November. Sad tuba sound effect!

What are these shocking books, and how are they being “forced on children”? Why, they are books that show gay and trans people existing! Are they being “forced on children”? They are not! The books are not part of any curriculum. They’re on the school resource list, with educators having the option to use them in a lesson if they choose to. But these parents (with deep-pocketed right-wing lawyer support, of course), are frothing mad that their children are being indoctrinated and coerced into accepting that people who are different exist and have happy lives with families and partners who love them.

There’s “Pride Puppy” (Wonkette commission link!), an alphabet book for kids ages 3-5 about a kid going to a Pride parade, that has a “Search and Find Word List” that encourages children to search for images of, among other things, the “intersex [flag],” a “[drag] king,” “leather,” a “lip ring,” a “[drag] queen,” and “underwear.” 

A lip ring! Where are my pearls? Also, how can you tell who is the drag king? We can’t find them and must make do with watching drag king Ned Flanders again. Stupid sexy Flanders.

Anyway there’s also “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope,” about a trans child. Excerpt: “When Penelope’s brother protests—“You can’t become a boy. You have to be born one”—he’s told that “[n]ot everything needs to make sense. This is about love.” LOVING YOUR CHILDREN, Horrifying!! And “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” wherein the titular Uncle Bobby marries a dude and they are happy together!

The parents are also super mad about the School Board’s guidance on transgender children:

When we are born, people make a guess about our gender and label us “boy” or “girl” based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong. Our body parts do not decide our gender. Our gender comes from inside—we might feel different than what people tell us we are. We know ourselves best.

According to the lawsuit, this “promote[s] one-sided transgender ideology, [and] encourage[s] gender transitioning,” which would seem to be at direct odds with the POV that gender is also strictly binary and immutable, but what do we know? And anyway, how does having a book in a classroom create a burden on parents practicing their religion? The Fourth Circuit doesn’t know either. 

Says the majority opinion,

“We conclude that the parents have not come forward at this stage with sufficient evidence of a cognizable burden on their free exercise rights to satisfy the requirements of a free exercise claim. What is missing here is the evidentiary link showing that the storybooks are being implemented in a way that directly or indirectly coerces the parents or their children to believe or act contrary to their religious faith.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of parents who describe themselves as Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox, and of course it is backed by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, that Catholic group founded by an Alito acolyte that was behind Hobby Lobby banning birth control for its employees, and co-signed by Moms For Liberty. 

Montgomery County is directly northwest of Washington DC and includes Takoma Park, aka “the Berkeley of the East.” The majority of parents there want their children to know that the world is full of different people who all deserve respect, and they elect school board members who reflect that. But right-wing extremists are not big fans of “democracy” when it means they can’t bully other people and tell them how to live their lives. It’s a recurring theme.

Oh well, suck it, haters.