The Supreme Court, on June 27th, upheld the right of parents to remove their children from gender-laden indoctrination in public schools. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court ruled 6-3 that Montgomery County, Maryland, violated the rights of parents of children from preschool through grade 5 by denying them opt-outs from mandatory teaching and book readings promoting a gender ideology agenda.
Deferring to the lawyers to analyze the details of the Court’s reasoning and how robust Mahmoud is in the light of the Magna Carta of parental rights, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, my first response is to comment on the reactions to the decision. I call it trying to “switch the ‘story.’” I will look at three examples.
First, the ruling itself. The 135 pages of opinions (majority ruling, dissent) are unusual in that I would call it the “battle of the storybooks.” Rarely does one see pictures in Supreme Court opinions. But Mahmoud v. Taylor’s got pictures, pictures of pages from children’s storybooks: 10 for the majority opinion, 26 for the dissent.
As “a picture is worth a thousand words,” each side picked pictures likely to elicit visceral reactions to support the opinion in which they are inserted. The ten in the majority opinion are all intended to show unvarnished approval of same-sex “marriage.” The 26 inserted in the dissent are mostly bland vanilla about “love,” trying to suggest the case is much ado about nothing (except, maybe, for some kind of phobic religious zealots trying to impose their views on Maryland kids).
Yes, these books are pretty simple: after all, we’re talking about children aged four to maybe ten—a very impressionable phase of life. And that is when Montgomery County decided it has a “right” to “co-parent” with real mothers and fathers in the values to which impressionable young minds are exposed.
If we want to be honest about the vulgarity of these gender ideology curricula, consider that books on lists in other school districts for older children attacked by parents there were defended by Senate Democrats as opposition to “book bans.” Now watch this video. It features Louisiana Senator John Kennedy reading excerpts from one of the books being defended. Listen to how much of Kennedy’s reading is bleeped out because its content is deemed inappropriate in public media. I remember a similar video last year of a parent reading excerpts to a local school board from a similar book being defended by some members opposed to “book bans.” That board shut the parent down from reading the book aloud in an open meeting because its content was deemed inappropriate to a general audience.
Inappropriate to a general audience but fitting for children confined to the public school plantation?
Second, Democrats. “Senate Judiciary Democrats” is the public X feed of the minority members of the U.S. Senate committee responsible for courts and constitutional rights. Illinois Catholic Senator Dick Durbin, as ranking minority member, is the face of the feed. It tweeted two attacks on the ruling. One was the usual accusation: Mahmoud “allows for LGBTQ+ discrimination in public schools” while being a “loss for freedom of speech, public education, and LGBTQ+ rights.”
But the tweet that interested me was short and pithy: “LGBTQ+ stories matter—no matter what the Supreme Court says” (emphasis added). Their spin was that the stories gender ideologues tell must be heard by your children … even if you and the United States Supreme Court disagree.
Third, religious gender activists. Not to be outdone by the judges and politicians, Jesuit priest James Martin likewise assures us of the importance of “stories.” “Allowing people to exempt their children from hearing stories, even fictional ones, with LGBTQ people, can prevent them from the kind of deep learning needed to build empathy with those from different backgrounds, a key step in the development of a moral life” insists the New York Jesuit. Exempting them for allegedly religious reasons is to misunderstand another “story,” the parable of the Good Samaritan, where “religious reasons” were used to waive two of the sojourners’ obligations towards the hurting victim. Our failure to tell (or hear) these gender ideology stories impedes people (including children) from “get[ting] to know them as our brothers and sisters. And our friends.”
For Fr. Martin, the plaintiff parents are not just wrong but guilty–probably invincibly, but maybe not–of bad parenting.
As is often the case, the interests that lost in Mahmoud sought to redefine the narrative, to “rewrite the story.” They know that children in the age group that Montgomery County demanded sit through this indoctrination are highly impressionable, which the Court majority also admit. They know that the message being sent is one of approval of these lifestyles. As Justice Alito wrote in the Opinion of the Court (p. 7):
… if a parent were to ask whether the school was attempting to teach a child to “reject” the values taught at home, teachers were encouraged to respond that “[t]eaching about LGBTQ+ is not about making students think a certain way; it is to show that there is no one “right” or “normal” way to be.
If that’s not approval (or undermining of parents) via the dictatorship of relativism, it’s hard to imagine what would be. It’s clear: if parents tell their single-digit-aged child there is a “’right’ …way to be,” Montgomery County has decided to tell that child that mommy or daddy is wrong.
What is particularly invidious is saying that what parents teach is wrong, through the highly effective use of stories fed to minds lacking the capacity for critical reason, respecting authority figures like teachers, and using that respect to pit the child’s most important and loving authority figures against other ones precisely to erode that parental primacy.
The Supreme Court was having none of that. One would likewise suspect neither would Christ—and that He might find a deficit of millstones for those deliberately corrupting children while feigning their studied and neutral, innocent benevolence.
Justice Sotomayor revisited this issue more directly in her dissent. To her, it is the usual “education as ‘partner’ to parents” shtick. According to that paradigm, public education is essential to inculcating the values of living in a pluralistic, democratic society that the parochial perspectives of parents (especially those “clinging” to religion) might omit. In that mindset, the public school exists to liberate the child from parental blinders to expose (inculcate) him with the “values” of that society.
It’s the same bit that every “we know better than parents” proponent invokes to bludgeon parental rights. Oregon nativists in 1925 were going to save youngsters from the Romish immigrant parents by rescuing them from parochial education. Maryland gender ideologues in 2025 were going to protect youngsters from X-phobic parents (some of whom were immigrants) by exposing preschoolers to two husbands.
Montgomery County may have lost, but the proponents of gender ideology will no doubt come back to fight another day. Expect them to do so with slogans of “book bans” for older kids and “partnering with parents” for toddlers and tweenies. It’s no coincidence to note that the same day Mahmoud came down, it also upheld (Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, same 6-3 split) Texas’s requirement that pornographic websites verify users were at least eighteen years old. The plaintiff’s arguments in Paxton were classic obscenity defenses: pornography is in the eye of the beholder and impossible to define, so don’t abridge potential access in the name of free speech. Within hours, The New York Times published an op-ed praising the value of internet pornography.
My favorite response to the tall tales being told by the Court’s minority, many Democrats, and religious shills for gender ideology is to demand these stories be told … out loud, in public. Because, after having listened to an excerpt from some books being defended for young people read aloud in a school board meeting—content that would have largely been bleeped out like Senator Kennedy’s public reading—the local mayor was unambiguous: either get these “stories” out of school or he would file charges against the Board under his state’s distribution of obscenity to minors statutes.
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Thanks for this analysis and keep it coming!
God bless Senator Kennedy. He’s something else.
And God bless those parents in Maryland who protect their children. Both Christian and Muslim.
Sen John Kennedy is a national treasure. I keep a record of his memorable lines, including one applicable to these folks in this case: “they’re about 10 exits past normal.”
Thank you Dr. Grondelski. That’s a priceless quote.
🙂
I believe He protected the children simply with, “Let the children come to Me.”
Let the the innocent be innocent and hold them harmless. The complexities and rigor of adult life will come soon enough, and consume the vast majority of their time on earth.
Thank you. Really good analysis of the issue of homosexual education for young children. One thing that Basic Christianity, both Catholic and non-Catholic, teaches, is to “Love one another.”
My hope is that Christians, regardless of their opposition to the practice of homosexuality and homosexual marriage, will continue to be kind and loving towards those who are caught up in this lifestyle for various reasons, and at the same time, oppose the forces in government, media, etc. that encourage the choice and lifestyle.
And I also hope that parents will remain aware of the immense pressures of modern life in the 21st Century (especially through the internet and social media) that wants to indoctrinate their children with ideas that are definitely anti-Christ, and be vigilant about protecting their children from evil influences but at the same time, helping them to learn how Jesus Christ can keep them pure and holy as long as they stay close to Him.
I am a musician and many of my friends are actively gay–but I don’t take it upon myself to try to “preach them away from it.” I pray for them and show them love, respect, kindness, and friendship.
There are lots of theories about why people have same-sex attraction–it’s not just a “choice”, but it’s a complex issue. Some “sins” become a lifestyle because of early influences (e.g., criminal parents), or because of various addictions (e.g., alcohol misuse). But sexuality–well, the explanation is still up in the air. Those who have embraced homosexuality often insist that they were “born that way”–and there is possibly some merit in that, although it’s certainly not proven. I personally think that it can be as the result of the influence of well-meaning parents, but…I am not claiming to be right about this.
My daughter has a friend who was pregnant but lost her mother to cancer before she had the baby. When HE was born, she decided that “he” was actually a “she”–and dressed him as a girl, gave him girl toys, and kept him away from boys. (I’m not sure how she handled potty training.) He’s now around 5 years old–and is still being treated as a girl. I believe that this mom decided this because she was traumatized about her own mother’s death and was trying to replace her, but what do I know? At any rate, we all feel badly for this young boy and his mom.
These things happen, and we need to be loving and kind–but I’m not sure what can actually be done, and can only hope that eventually, this boy will recognize that he is NOT a girl, and kindly but firmly let his mother know that even though he loves her, he will no longer be her “daughter.” Perhaps then, his mom will get the help she needs to finally recover and move on from her own mother’s death.
Our responsibility as Christians is to love our fellow human beings–ALL of them–and treat them with respect and kindness. There is no law against that. Some of us are called to become people who attempt to help people forsake sinful practices, but all of us are called to love with the love that Jesus showed for all mankind.
I agree with you — we need not be harpies, but we cannot confuse love of the sinner with indulgence of the sin. We are all the former; we all need to avoid the latter.
Yes, we do need to be loving and kind – but first of all towards one who is the victim. And the victim here, of the mother’s selfishness, is a child. It does not matter that the mother was traumatized by the loss of her own mother, I mean it does not matter for the outcome, for the boy’s experience and for how that experience will affect his whole life.
If the mother is acting like that to replace own mother (I find it plausible) then it is very Freudian if you like. It is a kind of parentification from the earliest age, making the child the mother for herself, changing his sex for that purpose. It means a mother does not see her son as a person. He is a tool for self-gratification.
The persons I have dealt with, men who were dressed like girls by their relatives (for much briefer periods of time, from 1 to 3 y.o.), typically had a confusion about their sex when they were teens. They did not know how to approach girls, they were mocked by girls, they were targeted by homosexual predators, they had suicidal ideation. They felt alien in groups of boys in school. That means their personal lives, as of men, were ruined.
And so, your acquaintance is ruining the boy’s life as a man and you think that (one) “can only hope that eventually, this boy will recognize that he is NOT a girl, and kindly but firmly let his mother know that even though he loves her, he will no longer be her “daughter.” I hope the boy will not be “kind” to his mother but will have plenty of just anger because, if he is unable to express his anger with her, he will turn it towards himself, up to self-destruction.
What can be done: not sure. Theoretically speaking, there should be some sane relatives of the boy somewhere who should realize it is wrong and interfere. If there is a father around, why is he silent? If this situation is allowed to go on for years then the family is likely to be problematic as well.
I would agree Mrs Sharon that as Christians were should treat everyone with charity but sadly it often doesn’t work that way in reverse. It can be their way or the highway if we don’t celebrate and affirm everything associated with the SSA lifestyle.
I don’t believe there is any requirement to respect what a person says or does, but just the person made in the image of God. Love and pray for your enemy yes, and give them your coat as well if they ask for your shirt.
“Inappropriate to a general audience but fitting for children confined to the public school plantation?” (Grondelski). Best line I’ve read of late that pointedly tells the case story and the reason for the Supreme Court decision.
I fully agree that the Public school curriculum for early grade students should not contain objectionable graphic material. It certainly should not be making it mandatory to teach and book readings promoting a gender ideology agenda.
I am curious about…
I find it difficult to envision a young child in elementary school having to “reveal” a transgender urge.
Who is promoting and providing the objectionable material to the schools?
Aren’t the parents attending Parent-Teacher meetings to determine the content of the curriculum? We did.
I might challenge the verb in the last sentence. I think that many school boards — esp. those most committed to gender ideology — will not let parents “determine” curricular content but, at best, “advise” or “consult” about it.
Shouldn’t the taxpayers have a say in the matter? (I’m asking your thoughts on this matter) It seems like these governmental agencies/boards what have you think that we work for THEM.
Are we all just to be sheep when it comes to societal and money matters? Should we gleefully “applaud” the questionable?
Thanks, John.
School boards are accountable to the residents of the district they serve and who elected them. This means they have a responsibility to keep the community informed and must make their decisions using input from the public and members of the school community.
Much of that input should come from Parent Teacher sessions. Anything less leans toward an autocracy.
I find myself compelled to express a theological reservation regarding the appellation “Father” when referencing Martin. While acknowledging his considerable erudition, a characteristic shared, notably, by the Pharisees and Sadducees of antiquity, it becomes evident upon rigorous examination that his teachings diverge significantly from a comprehensive apprehension of divine revelation.
Indeed, Martin’s intellectual trajectory appears to have extended beyond the established theological boundaries, particularly in his apprehension and exposition of the foundational principles and divine commandments pertaining to God the Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Consequently, his corpus of work, rather than fostering theological clarity, regrettably appears to sow discord and confusion among the faithful, steering them, as it were, onto a perilous eschatological trajectory.
Why or how does he maintain the title, Father?