The judge cited the Supreme Court’s recent decision establishing parents’ right to opt kids out of LGBTQ+ inclusive lessons.
A Boston judge has ruled in favor of a Massachusetts dad who sued his local school district to ensure his five-year-old son is never exposed to books featuring LGBTQ+ characters.
As the Boston Herald reported, the father, identified in court documents as Alan L., is described as a “devout Christian” who objects to the inclusion of certain children’s books featuring LGBTQ+ characters in the kindergarten curriculum of Joseph Estabrook Elementary School, where his son, identified as J.L., is enrolled.
The case isn’t finished yet, I see, so maybe sanity can yet prevail. So far it’s just a preliminary injunction.
“The question presented here is not whether the viewpoints of plaintiff, or those of the school officials, are ‘correct’ as a matter of religious faith or political or social belief. Nor is it whether the materials should be part of the kindergarten curriculum for other students,” Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, explained. “Instead, this case presents a narrow question: whether these specific defendants have provided the required notice and opportunity to review materials that this specific plaintiff may find objectionable, so that he may opt his child out of classroom instruction that violates his religious beliefs.”
In granting Alan L.’s request for a preliminary injunction, which will remain in place while the case proceeds, Saylor ordered the school and district to “make reasonable efforts to ensure that J.L. is not taught or otherwise exposed to the content of the Identified Books, whether in the classroom or any other school setting” and to ensure J.L. receives “reasonable age-appropriate alternative instruction.”
Lawyers for Lexington Public Schools, however, said the district looks forward to “aggressively defending against these claims.” In a statement, attorneys Douglas I. Louison and Alexandra M. Gill noted the district’s existing religious-based opt-out program and that the Supreme Court’s Mahmoud decision “made it clear that depicting the mere existence of potentially-offensive values or lifestyles is not enough to warrant an opt-out, and that it is the messaging associated with those potentially-offensive materials that determines whether an opt-out is warranted.”
“In this case, the materials are not associated with any LGBTQ±focused curriculum or paired instruction, nor was the student even exposed to the two books at issue,” Louison and Gill added, according to the Herald.
Louison and Gill also noted the burden opt-out demands like Alan L.’s place on schools.
“This is not like a student with a peanut allergy, where the implementation of an accommodation to protect the student is reasonably clear,” they wrote. “Schools are burdened enough without having to scour the pages of a storybook for potentially gay-appearing characters. At what point, for instance, is a character’s haircut too short to presume they are a woman? Are two men sitting together at a restaurant presumed to be gay, or might they just be friends? There are innumerable scenarios like these, and schools are now being forced to make near-impossible judgments.”
If there’s a gilod, this guy’s kid will be gay, and not shy about it.
As jesus preached “Don’t be a bag of dicks!”, and it’s never stopped one one of these bigoted fuckers from cherry picking the message of their god. May his sons loafers be so light he floats.
That dude is probably on Grindr
Amazing they enroll someone in school to not learn things. Devout ignorance.
well they identify as christians, and devout ignorance is literally what they subscribe to so it checks out
Kid is going to have a rude awakening when he runs a web query on his dad and everything that comes up has “gay” in the title.
Dad vs Reality lawsuit incoming.
As a Christian, I object to books featuring rich people, people who don’t help poor people, people who don’t heal the sick, and people who are mean to foreigners. Unless the perpetrators of those unChristian acts get their comeuppance, of course. Can I now demand from schools that my kid doesn’t get exposed to those kinds of books?
As the Boston Herald reported, the father, identified in court documents as Alan L., is described as a “devout Christian” who objects to the inclusion of certain children’s books featuring LGBTQ+ characters in the kindergarten curriculum of Joseph Estabrook Elementary School, where his son, identified as J.L., is enrolled.
$20 says this fuck rubs it to gay porn.
You honestly think its more likely that he’s gay than just the standard kind of homophobic christian??
I mean…how many people who are anti-gay come out every week or two in politics that are actually gay and brainwashed by religion to suppress their own desires? It’s why priests are the way they are.
That said, my comment was mostly in jest.
How often would someone who is anti-gay being straight be reported on by the media? This narrative that most homophobes are gay is really harmful and misguided.
Harm wasn’t intended. Sorry for the misguided humor. I’ll keep this in mind in the future.
Doesn’t this open the way for a parent to sue the school over Christian symbolism? A parent could should take that school to court over a Christmas tree.
Pledge of allegiance should be banned too
It’s Heads-I-Win and Tails-You-Lose in the Trump-stacked court system.
You’re looking at the judiciary as some kind of impartial machine, but you need to see it as a Vegas Casino, where you can maybe win a hand or two here or there but the game is stacked against you by design.
There is no world in which a conservative court bans Christmas Trees or Crosses or any other Christian iconography, because these courts are run by evangelical Christians for the benefit of evangelical Christians. You might as well ask a Chinese court to remove images of Mao from the classroom or an Iranian court to outlaw the Koran.
yes and you know it doesn’t work that way
In Massachusetts it might.
I mean yes but also You’re out of touch if you think the judges value internal consistency like that.
no wonder the system is a joke
it absolutely does
And now because of the Streisand Effect, their child knows all about LGBTQ+ people while also having the knowledge that their dad is a piece of shit.
And now because of the Streisand Effect
The point isn’t actually to “protect the child from knowing”. The point is to censor school faculty from speaking positively of LGBTQ+ people and to exclusively degrade and slander the community from reactionary media organs.
The kid will absolutely know about LGBTQ+ people, because their minister will give fire and brimstone speeches about how the community is full of sinful and debauched degenerates. The kid will be raised to hate and fear LGBTQ+ people because they will only be shown to him in the most negative light.
This lawsuit guarantees any public employee who contradicts this framing can be legally fired, that they can suffer civil and criminal liabilities that bankrupt them, and that the kid can be used as a weapon to justify this persecution.
I think you’re right.
I grew up in the '80s, and I heard more about “homosexuals” in church than anywhere else. (I also knew far more about abortion than anyone else in my kindergarten class. As an adult, I would say my understanding was not age-appropriate.)
The good news is that the final straw for me losing my faith was going to university and actually meeting openly gay people. They were nothing like I had been taught they would be. And the whole evangelical house of cards came crashing down for me.
I hope other kids in these sorts of households have similar revelations.
these churches mistreat children for their own gain. it’s sickening
I think you are right, and I find the thought of raising someone with the intent to keep them ignorant is gross.
As a teacher, one could not bring up the subject, but one could encourage critical thinking.
If I had the opportunity, but with these constraints I would say:
“How do you know they are bad (or X opinion)? The Church thought Galileio was wrong about the sun being in the center of the solar system, and scientists thout Harlen Bretz’s theory about the Missoula floods sounded too biblical. Anyone can be wrong; so it is important to gather information and decide for yourself.”
And yes, I believe a child would understand the point, even if they don’t get the references.
There’s a very “We Report You Decide” attitude among liberal teachers. And while I don’t object to it on it’s face, I gotta say it feels more and more like bringing a pea shooter to a machine gun fight.
I wouldn’t expect anyone - child or adult - to intuit morality. At some point you just have to hang the rainbow flag and declare your classroom a safe space for transgender kids
Religion = denial of reality.
It should be illegal for religious people to indoctrinate children with their religious beliefs.
But in USA they have turned it on its head, and made it illegal to teach the truth because of religious superstition!It’s the same as the “basic biology” argument. Twisting something to the point it breaks in order to justify their hate. The Bible has gay people in it.
In the Bible, one of the people that Jesus heals is the slave of a Roman soldier. In the original Latin text, the word they use is for a kind of male slave kept as a consort/sex slave. King David, one of God’s chosen, is a bisexual man who had multiple wives and a male “friend” who “loved him in a way that no woman ever could.”
Being gay or bi was so normal back then that they never bothered to spell it out, not thinking that centuries later some heretics would twist their words to spread their hate.
In Texas, voters just passed a constitutional amendment giving parents the right “to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing” specifically for cases like this. Almost everyone I spoke to was in full support of it and kept saying “obviously a parent should decide what’s best for their child”. But as someone who grew up in a toxic religious family, it makes me so sad to see that there’s no protection for kids in these situations. Parents can ensure they’re doomed to a life of ignorance and bigotry before they even have a chance. :(
Why even have kids if they can’t be warrior-slaves for your crusade?
Legalized child abuse.
I see this as a complete parenting fail. It is not your job as a parent to ‘protect’ your child from the world, it is your job to prepare them for it.
That poor kid is gonna need a lot of therapy later in life after he/she moves out on their own.
Dad in the future: “Son, you never call or visit. You’re always so busy.”
Parents like this ultimately hope the child never moves out. It is a cult.
Parents like this hope the child moves out when they graduate high school and get rich so their kid can care for them when they’re old.
Can confirm. I have a father just like this. He wants me to take care of him despite being a racist transphobic idiot.
That is a very silly take.
Teach them how to think, not what to think.
You realize they don’t really care? They just do it to exert control over public institutions. It’s a way of threatening and eventually firing progressive teachers. Majority of those court cases are manufactured by right-wing think tanks and the parents are just some random people. In many cases the “victims” suing were not even real. It doesn’t matter. The Supreme Court will eventually take the case and give Christians another win.
The politicians who confect the controversy may do it for that reason, but you’re making a mistake if you think the ordinary believers are anything but sincere in their beliefs.
How do they square it then? Well, that’s easy: they themselves weren’t really exposed to gay people growing up and they turned out just fine - they hate gay people, just like God intended.
I honestly think that people following this line of people just really can’t imagine that people are that prejudiced, but they do be like that.
They sure are homophobic but they don’t normally sue schools to shield their children from LGBT books just like they don’t normally go to court to let them discriminate gay couples in their bakery. Lawsuits like that cost money. If you appeal and appeal up to the Supreme Court it costs serious money. These lawsuits are politically motivated hit jobs sponsored but right wing donors and executed by right wing think tanks. People really need to realize this is how they operate now. Those are not some grassroots movements or random Christians trying to “protect” their kids. Those are all well prepared, targeted actions, sometimes planned and executed over many years. This is how they overturned Roe v. Wade, this is how they took control over public libraries and this is how they will take over education.
I don’t think “most people don’t have a billion dollars to use the US court system” says much about what they’d do if they did have a billion dollars.
Yeah, the money to fight it may be donated by people with ulterior motives - or it may be donated by a million true believers - but that doesn’t change that there are true believers, and trying to pretend they don’t exist will lead you to say stupid things and fight back in the wrong way.
I’m not saying no one rally believes this shit. I’m saying believers are not the real problem. How would you fight believers? Ban religion? The problem are the corrupt institutions and weak laws. The solution is to pass laws that actually protect people. Roe v. Wade wasn’t abolished because people started believing harder. Support for abortion is actually fairly stable and grew in recent decade. What changed is that Republicans took over the Supreme Court and cooked a state level lawsuit that let them abolish it. All those cases are like that. Getting mad at “true believers” will lead you to nowhere. You should be mad at Democrats for failing to pass laws on federal level when they had the chance.
Christianity has harmed more people that LGBTQ people have. Many types of Christians have to try and save you by converting you. LGBTQ folks aren’t trying to convert you.
Compare the number of Christians convicted of child sex crimes vs the number of LGBTQ+ who have and it paints a pretty one sided picture.
Numbers wouldn’t be meaningful, only percentages.
It would be the same result either way
I bet the numbers per capita are pretty similar.
I would actually bet slanted slightly towards LGBT because of self-id. The mental hurdle of accepting that you’re attracted to people of the same gender is hopefully lower than accepting that you’re attracted to children.
Then again, maybe the opposite is true for christians.
You’d probably lose that bet
Why do you think that? Is it because of all the news you’ve read about Catholic priests?
What do you think the balance of news was like before that story came out?
The bull hypothesis has got to be that people all have the same base line propensity. The only thing I know that changes it is themselves being abused as children.
I’ve actual heard decades ago people insist that the LGBTQ community was in fact trying to convert people.
Imagine thinking evangelicals aren’t the ones converting people away from a religion of hate, hubris and hypocrisy.
they never stopped saying that at any point from then to now
Many types of Christians have to try and save you by converting you. LGBTQ folks aren’t trying to convert you.
That’s one motivation behind their behavior. Since they are constantly trying to manipulate people to join them, they assume the gays are recruiting, too.
“The fluoride in the water is making the frogs gay” - one of America’s greatest thinkers /s
It’s not just Christianity. Religion is the excuse to be hateful
Ban books that show people wearing clothes with mixed fabrics! Its against mah religion!
Why do fundamentalist Christians choose homosexuality specifically as their hill to die on?
Leviticus 19:19
“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.”
Deuteronomy 22:11
“You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”
Why do fundamentalist Christians choose homosexuality specifically as their hill to die on?
It’s an easy out-group to identify and target.
With the advantage that the target can’t easily opt out of it. It’s probably fairly easy to stop wearing clothes from a wool/linen mix (although avoiding cotton/polyester might be harder), so your target disappears.
This guy is probably one of two types: a) He’s a culture warrior who gets a little thrill if he makes life a bit harder for the gays because he was told they are the enemy or b) he needs to uphold his current cultural zeitgeist because if people are allowed to do the things that make them happy then what’s stopping him from banging his hot neighbor Greg and if he can do that he’s wasted his life married to a person he’s not actually attracted to and it was all a lie. So he goes super hard on being anti-gay to stop those intrusive thoughts. Stay occupied. Don’t think about it. Hate hate hate.
Or c) this parent is a pawn being used by right wing interests.
Ding ding ding
To think, if we’d had this kind of majority 20 years ago, we could have removed the entire study of evolution from high school criteria.
