If you talk to any experienced and honest teacher these days, from elementary school on up, one of the first things they will tell you is how quickly gender ideology has taken hold. Virtually overnight, students began adopting fake pronouns and made-up genders.
To call this phenomenon “unnatural” would be a vast understatement. It’s obviously engineered. Teachers and school boards are pushing this nonsense on children who are far too young to know any better. The public school system has committed itself to indoctrinating children, in many cases without their parents’ knowledge or consent. But after what happened yesterday at the Supreme Court, it’s very clear that accountability is finally coming for these ghouls.
After many years of spewing LGBT propaganda with total impunity, school districts will soon face major new restrictions on their ability to pollute the minds of elementary-school-age children. Based on how the justices acted during oral arguments yesterday, “Mahmoud v. Taylor” could easily turn out to be one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings of this generation.
Before we review the oral arguments, here is some background. The case began after Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest school district in Maryland — introduced a new “gender and sexuality curriculum.” Initially, students (or their parents) could opt out of this curriculum for any reason. But after a short period of time, the school district claimed that it wasn’t feasible to continue allowing opt outs. So it’s mandatory now. To give you an idea of what exactly this curriculum entails, here’s an image from one book that children are introduced to.
Screenshot: What Are Your Words?
This is what’s apparently known as an “LGBT storybook.” This one’s called, “What Are Your Words?” As you can see, one line of dialogue reads, “My pronouns are like the weather. They change depending on how I feel.”
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is a nonprofit, reported on some other books that were included in this new curriculum:
[O]ne book tasks three and four-year-olds to search for images from a word list that includes ‘intersex flag,’ ‘drag queen,’ ‘underwear,’ ‘leather,’ and the name of a celebrated LGBTQ activist and sex worker. Another book advocates a child-knows-best approach to gender transitioning, telling students that a decision to transition doesn’t have to ‘make sense.’ Teachers are instructed to say doctors only ‘guess’ when identifying a newborn’s sex anyway.
When parents of varying religious faiths — including Muslims and Christians — objected to the idea that their 5-year-olds needed to be taught about “sex work” and “gender transitioning” by Left-wing activists posing as teachers, the school district told them they had no recourse. In fact, the district slandered the parents as bigots. All these parents were seeking was the ability to opt out of this indoctrination. They didn’t even demand that the classes be removed from the curriculum. But the school district denied their request. So the parents sued.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
Which brings us to yesterday’s oral arguments. I want to begin with this question from Justice Alito, because it gets to the core of the issue. Alito wants to know why the school district is so hell-bent on forcing children to read books about homosexuality, transgenderism and so on. (To be clear, that’s what the school district is doing. They’re not merely providing these books in the school library. Teachers are actively telling students to read the books as part of class.) The truthful answer to Justice Alito’s question is simple: The Left understands that, if the LGBT movement is going to survive, it needs to indoctrinate new members at a very young age.
But the school district can’t say that out loud, of course. So instead, the lawyer representing the Montgomery school district’s superintendent, a man named Alan Schoenfeld, starts talking in circles about how impossible it would be, at a practical level, for the school district to allow students to opt out of this curriculum. But nothing he says actually makes sense. It gets so bad that, at the end of his rambling non-answer, Justice Kavanaugh chimes in to confirm that indeed, no one has any idea what the hell this guy is talking about. Watch:
As best I can tell, the lawyer for the school district is claiming that, because students might talk among themselves about certain LGBT books that are discussed in this curriculum, it’s therefore impossible to allow students to opt out of this kind of curriculum. In other words, whether or not students opt out, there’s a chance that they’ll hear about the materials that are discussed in these gay adventure books.
But this ignores a couple of obvious points.The big one is that, when a teacher is communicating a lesson to a class, it has a very different effect, as compared to one student talking to another student about a book during recess or whatever. The teacher is in a position of authority. It’s much easier for a 5-year-old to discount something another 5-year-old says, than it is to discount the wisdom of a 40-year-old teacher he’s told to trust. If this is an argument for anything, it’s an argument for not having these materials in the school to begin with. Which of course is the correct answer. But either way, it is not an argument against allowing parents to opt out.
The lawyer for the school district knows this but he can’t admit it. So he ends up confusing everyone in the room with a bunch of doublespeak. This kept happening throughout the oral arguments. Listen to this moment where Justice Gorsuch points out that, in Montgomery County, teachers are told to actively correct students who dare to suggest that men can’t become women. Gorsuch then asks the lawyer for Montgomery County whether this could constitute “coercion.” The obvious answer is yes. But instead of saying that, here’s the gibberish that the attorney comes back with:
Justice Gorsuch gives an example where a student says, “a boy can’t be a girl.” And then the lawyer states that it’s not “coercive,” in any way, for the teacher to correct the student’s comment, in front of the entire class. He then changes his mind and says the opposite.
Even when he’s not contradicting himself, the school district’s lawyer managed to make a mockery of the entire case.
Here’s his opening statement, for example:
Yes, according to this attorney for the school district, there’s no difference between teaching elementary-school students about wars, and teaching them that boys can become girls. Telling students about the War of 1812 is just like telling them that it’s totally reasonable to chemically castrate minors.
One of the ways we know this isn’t true, aside from using basic common sense, is that there’s no army of parents demanding that schools stop teaching students about wars. That’s because it’s understood that teaching students about wars is not a general endorsement of violence. Additionally, everyone agrees that history is important and useful because it’s grounded in reality. On the other hand, gender ideology is just that — ideological.
This lawyer was not the only person to embarrass himself yesterday. That’s a given. After all, Ketanji Brown Jackson was also in attendance at the hearing. And as you’d expect, she did not disappoint. Single-handedly, she dropped the collective IQ in the room by about 10 points, just by opening her mouth. And of course, she opened her mouth on the side of indoctrinating children, because she takes the Left’s position on every issue. Behold, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s argument in favor of mandatory indoctrination in public schools:
Yes, you can homeschool, says Ketanji Brown Jackson. You can pay for an expensive private school. Therefore, there’s no “burden” on these parents, apparently. It’s not a “burden” to have to pay more money, and change your child’s school, because Montgomery County decided to teach LGBT propaganda. And then the lawyer representing the parents responds, and points out that she’s completely wrong, and many other cases demonstrate why she’s wrong. And then she goes quiet and they move on.
Here’s one more clip from these arguments, involving Justice Alito questioning the school board’s lawyer. He follows up on this logic, about how the parents can supposedly just go to a private school. He begins by talking from the perspective of one of these parents:
This is what it looks like in the Supreme Court when “sparks fly,” so to speak. Alito is making his disdain for the school district’s argument extremely clear, which is exactly what he should do. They’re trying to force-feed gender ideology to children, and instead of owning it, they’re lying and telling the parents to pay more money to find a private school that won’t interfere with their religious liberties. But the Constitution doesn’t work that way. And it appears the Montgomery County school district, and school districts all over the country, are about to discover that.
This is not a close case. That’s why even the far-Left outlet Vox reported:
The Supreme Court’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ argument went disastrously for public schools.
At the moment, the most likely outcome is that, when very young children are involved, parents will retain the right to opt out of curriculums involving gender ideology, or any other extreme ideology that conflicts with their established religion. Everyone can see this coming.
And just to underscore that, yesterday Randi Weingarten, the head of one of the largest teachers’ unions in the country, went on Fox News. And she admitted, right away, that she wouldn’t read these books in the classroom. Watch:
We all know that Randi Weingarten isn’t saying this because she believes it. She’s maybe the most calculating political operative in the country, after Nancy Pelosi. But Weingarten understands when the Left is overplaying its hand. She knows that they’re on the cusp of yet another crushing defeat in their efforts to indoctrinate children, and she’s trying to soften that blow when it inevitably comes.
Unfortunately for Weingarten, the truth is, there’s no way to accomplish that. Gender ideology and LGBT activists, as we’ve discussed many times, are now extremely unpopular. They have alienated the entire country, to the point that they may have cost Democrats the last election. The only way an ideology like this can survive is by targeting children before they’re able to develop their cognitive abilities. That’s their only viable play. And in a few short months, after this case is inevitably decided against the public school system of Montgomery County, it’ll be much, much harder for these people to accomplish that.
