Justices Let Parents Opt Children Out of Classes With L.G.B.T.Q. Storybooks​

And you've got MAGA cunts like Megyn Kelly and Riley Gaines cheering this on.

Bear in mind one of the example books is Prince and the Knight which is just a harmless story of a prince who falls in love with a knight. So it's about as 'explicit' as Snow White falling in love with Prince Charming.

They're not even hiding their homophobia now.

Everyone is going to scream at me, but this seems sensible. As I get older I’m constantly feeling this pull to the right that I’m finding harder and harder to resist.

I dont understand why gay and trans children’s books have to be a thing and I don’t understand the purpose they serve.

[quote]I dont understand why gay and trans children’s books have to be a thing and I don’t understand the purpose they serve.

Of course you don't, r3.

R3 The purpose is to indoctrinate children into thinking that it's possible to change genders, so that they perceive it as a healthy alternative to reality.

Does no one remember what it was like being a teen and being told "these books/internet sites/drugs are illegal/off limits? If alarmists think draconian rulings and laws are going to stop kids from accessing and learning about, well, anything they want to know about, (and this includes accessing porn with fake IDs or using VPN-type bypasses), they're nuts. There have always been laws saying "you can't do this" and there have always been those who break those laws anyway, either conspicuously or under the radar. Stop handing your personal power and agency over to an outside authority!!

Yes, the teachers are all indoctrinating the children, and every school nurse has a copy of “Transitions Made Easy.”

Of course I’m sure that parents will also be able to keep their kids out of class if books are discussed where characters wear mixed-blend fabrics or eat shellfish. Or ‘covet’ anything. Cause those are sins!!!

Go to your local library website. Search for Trans Juvenile YA. FILLED with Tranz books for kids. Very few books for gay kids. And the THEMz still bitch because there isn't more books about THEM. This is really out of control.

Reading these faux pious comments from supposed Queers on a Queer website hope I croke before I turn 60 and sanctimonious.

R9 Yet some children have easy access to guns that they can bring to their school and kill other children. The people who care about these damn books so much seem perfectly fine with that.

Not reported in the story, the name of the plaintiff…Mahmoud

DL is a queer website? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that word go unchallenged here.

I hope those who agree with this are also campaigning for any book with a straight relationship in to be banned as well.

Even if it involves no more than "the prince married his princess" because it's indoctrination, too!

[bold] NOT KIIDDING. This is at my library----------->>>>[/bold]A Tight Squeeze showcases the hot sex magick of queer t4t connection. Balancing the weird, fun, and exciting with the vulnerable and bewildering, laura q explores the complex and sometimes painful realities of transfem identity, desire, and erotic experiences. Share in the intimacy of two genderqueer lovers' tender first time together.........[bold] T4T...TRANSFEM....GENDERQUEER [/bold]....Seriously?

Montgomery Co. is pretty left leaning. The children whose parents withdraw them for the lessons they object to will be ostracized by their peers. Soon we’ll see complaints about that.

Like all of these “religious liberty” cases, it slices many ways. I predict we’ll see liberal parents suing over heterosexual stories and fairy tales.

[quote]I predict we’ll see liberal parents suing over heterosexual stories and fairy tales.

Good, I would. Fuck those homophobes.

Imagine being the kid of gay parents and watching your classmates march out of the room because of a simple storybook that talks about your family structure. He’ll, it might even be your own personal essay about your summer vacation or whatever. That’s a very crude and dangerous precedent.

I want to same right to ban Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs on the grounds she is teaching kids it's ok for woman to be whores in poly relationships with dwarf fetishes out of wedlock.

[bold] Drop the TEEEEE [/bold]. They are bringing us ALL down. Screenshot. "MAM" reading time for kids. Of course straights are sick of the tranz bullshit.

This is mostly tranny backlash.

[quote]...stories with gay and TRANSGENDER themes...

Why on EARTH do children need books about those suffering from gender Dysphoria?

Keep f***ing that dog, Leftists!

[quote]Leftists!

LoL

Straight people don't want to conversations with their six-year-olds about dilation and mastectomies.

These teachers don’t need to show my son how to sashay! He’s going to be a mayyyyann!

[bold] PLOT TWIST [/bold] = One of the books parents complained about---A boy named Penelope---was [bold] written by Jodie Patterson, activist and Chair of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation Board.[/bold]....How many HRC board members are writing books for GAY kids? Is it zero?

r24 Normal people you mean. Including lesbian and gay couples with kids.

[quote]The storybooks included “Pride Puppy,” an alphabet primer about a family whose puppy gets lost at a Pride parade; “Love, Violet,” about a girl who develops a crush on her female classmate; “Born Ready,” about a transgender boy; and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” about a same-sex union.

Pre-K through Grade 5.

I mean, come the fuck on. Why are we trying to die on this fucking hill?

You don't fuck with people's kids or their ability to raise their kids according to their moral practices. These parents weren't asking for anything exceptional, only to exempt their pre-kindergartner from being taught the alphabet through an allegory about a pride parade.

Of course that shit is going to read like indoctrination.

This is stupidity.

Makes no sense.

The parents want to control the school, who doesn’t want the students to have controlled thoughts.

[quote]Everyone is going to scream at me, but this seems sensible. As I get older I’m constantly feeling this pull to the right that I’m finding harder and harder to resist.

ALL of the decisions today seem reasonable, except for the decision barring nationwide injunctive relief at the district court level. And even that one isn't universally bad. Those injunctions cut both ways politically, and we will win some and we will lose others.

[quote]The parents want to control the school, who doesn’t want the students to have controlled thoughts.

You don't think teaching four year olds the alphabet through an allegory about a pride parade is thought control?

Can't believe the number of gross and hateful trolls on this thread alone. Education in the public schools in the US has two purposes. One is to teach facts and subjects. But the other, equally important one, is to teach kids that they are AMERICANS first. That means teaching them that the US is a melting pot of many different ethnicities, religions, colors, and, yes, SEXUAL ORIENTATIONS, and each one of those should be treated equally before the law, They are not Irish, Italian, Nigerian, Korean first. They are not from the caste of Untouchables here They are not hated Jews or Muslims or Hindus. This goal is accomplished by putting every child into a class with people who are NOT from the same background as the child is. This may the one of the few times in life where a rich child is seated next to a poor child. Where a white child is sitting next to a black child. Where a Christian is seated next to a Muslim. No matter what children hear or are taught at home, as children, they are naturally curious and accepting. The stories that they hear in literature classes should reflect the diversity of origin and lifestyles that they are seeing every time they look around their classrooms.

What is the message of having literature that only depicts straight white Christian kids and families? The message is that anyone different is less than. I'm not surprised that some people want to opt out. Sadly, it is their children who probably need that exposure the most. There are at least 100,000,000 poorly-educated Americans who somehow believe that the 10 Commandments are a foundational document of this country and need to be displayed in every school. Decisions like this one only embolden people like them to try to exclude all non-Christians from rightful citizenship of this country - to try to exclude black people and Latino people from citizenship, to exclude people from Jamaica or Colombia or Ghana from citizenship, and, most importantly for the purposes of this website, gay and other sexual minorities from being citizens.

I think homophobic people think that the books that are aimed at children under the age of 12 are "the Joys of Anal Sex", or "Dawson takes 100 loads".

The books for very young children are very benign, and usually only included gay characters that are depicted as normal citizens going about their daily lives. If that is "indoctrination", count me in.

I'm an educator. I teach music. I have taught quite a few boys that have grown up to be gay. I have never said one word about being gay or asked them about their feelings when they were my students. However, I have always lived openly - meaning that I have never pretended to be consumed with sports, or getting in fights, or trying to impress girls. The one universal comment that I have received from these former students when I hear from them is that they were so grateful to have someone in their lives who was gay, who was normal and not neurotic, and who was not ashamed of being gay, and that it helped them to accept themselves. I couldn't with for a better outcome.

wish^

Parents are so put upon because they might have to have an age appropriate conversation with their kid about gender and sexuality (eww!!) and god forbid their kid grows up to be something other than cisgender and straight. 😱

This nonsense makes me wish the country was struggling with real existential problems like famine and war.

tl/dr

Kids will find what they need. Castrating helicopter mommies are no match for adolescent sexuality.

[quote] But the other, equally important one, is to teach kids that they are AMERICANS first.

Nope. Not a primary responsibility of public schools. You made that up. Obviously, everyone’s definition of what it means to be an American is different. You’re mad because some parents want to exempt their children from being taught a version of America that looks different than your version. But that’s the way it goes. You don’t have the right to force your own world view down someone else’s family‘s throat.

These parents aren’t even saying that these things can’t be taught. Just that they want their kids removed from class when they’re being taught.

For you to argue that that’s not OK, just goes to show how much of a part of the problem you actually are.

Can I opt my child out of classes with straight storybooks?

If so, then I guess I'm okay with it.

The Supreme Court says you can, R39.

This is a very bad decision, so of course there are people on here defending it.

Parents, as a group, have TONS of input into how public schools are run. They vote for state legislators and local school boards. They can attend school board meetings . They can talk to their children's teachers and work with them.

Parents, individually, can withdraw their kids from public school. They can send them to private school. They can homeschool. They can send them to a school that says the Earth is flat. Hell, they can even say their religion doesn't require them to go to school beyond the eighth grade, so fuck high school (Wisconsin v. Yoder).

But saying every parent has a constitutionally required veto power to exempt their kid from lessons that a parent claims violates their religious beliefs IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL is a recipe for disaster. Schools have to deal with thousands of kids and each teacher deals with at least 30 (if not hundreds if they're junior high or high school). This is yet another attack on public education.

[quote]L.G.B.T.Q.

The Times' anachronistic insistence on putting periods into abbreviations drives me FUCKING crazy.

R38, I want my child removed from learning about the civil rights movement and the Holocaust. No need for my child to learn about that commie crap.

R38 also wrote:

“How the fuck HARD would it have been to sign a fucking resolution condemning the Holocaust??”

I wouldn't sign it on principal alone. Why the fuck should anyone sign something like that? It was nearly a century ago. And while it was a singularly horrific moment in time, it has also been exaggerated in ways that seem designed to maximize the perception of horror. For example, while I believe that 6 million Jewish people were killed during WWII by the Nazis and their state-based and community-based allies, I think it is far fetched that half of them died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

You’re full of shit, R44. I’m the one who made the comment about Mamdani in a totally different thread BTW. I am NOT R38. No idea where you got that. But you sound like an antisemitic loon.

R45, it is you. Ignore exposed you. You’re an antisemitic pos who should be thrown off a building. You won’t be missed.

R39 in fact you can take your make believe kids that will never exist and home school them. Even kids who don’t exist can be home schooled. And no worries about balancing dance class, with cooking and home decorating classes, or getting to Trans story time for little Bobby because little Bobby is not real.

R10 We are gays and lesbians and we are proud of it.

"Queer" with a capital Q is a different set of people who consider themselves allies to gays and lesbians.

Good for them but we were never Queer.

R8 There's a huge difference between personal private religious observation and encouraging six-year-olds to rip their tits off.

It has been a really (REALLY) long time since I was in school. I am curious about whether any of these LGBTQ books are part of any curriculum in public schools. I suspect not.

R35 Where the fuck did you get the idea that these conversations are any of your business?

Another example of why it fucking sucks that we are forced-teamed with the T. A lot of people who would take no issue with Heather Has Two Mommies would have a strong reaction to a book that tells kids they have no innate gender at birth. A lot of LGB parents even. Regardless of your opinions on the topic, it is a wholly separate issue.

Does this allow parents to excuse children from Christian related story times?

Yes, r53.

My good friend is part of the Society of Friends (aka Quakers) and is vehemently pacifist. I think she should let her son's school that she objects to wars and violence, and therefore on religious grounds does not want lesson plans about WW1, WW2, Civil War, etc or anything that objectifies guns.

[Quote] I dont understand why gay and trans children’s books have to be a thing and I don’t understand the purpose they serve.

They show kids that gays and trans people exist and are a part of the natural world.

Gay and trans books don’t make anyone gay or trans just like all those books with straight characters disnt make me straight

[Quote] It has been a really (REALLY) long time since I was in school. I am curious about whether any of these LGBTQ books are part of any curriculum in public schools. I suspect not.

They are not. Even the Maryland school district this case emanated from just included books that had LGBTQ characters in them. THAT’s what the parents were objecting to—the very fact that kids were taught LGBTQ people exist

[Quote] Can I opt my child out of classes with straight storybooks?

As long as you say it’s against your religion or deeply held belief

Math is against my religion

R9. I’ve known writers, editors, and others in the children’s/YA market. It’s extremely competitive—maybe more so than adult literary fiction. And the bottom line is just as critical (sales)—maybe more because your typical ch/ya book sells for about 2/3 an adult book.

So, there would not be this plethora of trans/NB/ace children’s/YA fiction if there weren’t a market for it. Granted, I’m sure some of the books may be “one-offs”—a single book by an author, sales low enough that mainstream publishers decide not to go forward with additional books by the author. Young readers are also inclined to “follow” a writer they like, not just series (like Harry Potter). But someone like John Green, who has built a lucrative career on “sick lit” for teens, few of whom have cancer. Add to that that a lot of trans YA fiction fits narrative tropes of “romantasy,” where world-building permits all manner of non-normative vicarious experiences. I loved “The Outsiders” when I was in sixth grade, but because I had any of the socio-economic of white Oklahoma greasers. But I gained empathy and insights into lives both unlike my own but with whom I learned to understand emotionally. I suspect the same principle may obtain with trans YA. Some readers may read one and consider what their own sexual/gender identity feels like.I suspect few of them actually transition—at least not beyond imagining a different gender, maybe trying it out (not hormonal or surgically) as they sort out the messiness of everyone’s lives.

[quote]There's a huge difference between personal private religious observation and encouraging six-year-olds to rip their tits off.

The fuck? No one is encouraging that except you apparently, you twat.

Even though this gives parents the right to take their kids out of classrooms that refer to LGBT characters (Don't Say Gay just went national, folks!), schools know that it's not possible to teach in those circumstances. Instead, it will force schools to pretend :LGBTQ doesn't exist.

Should be interesting when high school history classes discuss the Middle East. If they mention Jews, will Muslim students leave and vice versa?

Maryland. It is below the Mason-Dixon Line. When I moved to Baltimore I felt I’d never left St. Louis.

Any books teaching that there are "trans kids" is just wrong. There aren't any.

There are gender non-conforming GAY kids! I should know, I was one!

R46, you are absolutely insane. That is NOT me, you lying asshole.

There’s no such thing as a trans child. No child is born in the wrong body. This is the shit that got us into trouble.

R66, it is. Ignore shows it. Every person here can see it. You’re a rotten pos.

The trans children’s books in question are online and they are beyond inappropriate and are pedophile jerk off material.

R44 - yes, I did write that comment. So what? I will not retract, renounce or deny. So fuck you.

I don't know what R45 is talking about. That poster is not me, they are confused.

The way teens are rebelling against the 'rents these days is declaring themselves non-binary, queer and changing their pronouns. It's mostly fake, and they are doing incredible damage by instigating this hysteria against real LGBTQ+ people.

LEAVE. US. ALONE.

I remember in elementary, middle and high school a parent could opt their kid out of sex Ed, but I can’t remember anyone who did and this was in a deep red state.

Anyways, I don’t know maybe a historically inaccurate book about two sex workers written for 1st graders might be a just a bit too much.

Linked below the children’s book “Sylvia and Marsha Start A Revolution”

I changed the world!

I’m watching the pride march broadcast in NYC. Every segment is about trans. No exaggeration. Been watching over an hour and every single feature has been about trans and non-binary.

I watched about an hour+ of raw Gay Pride Parade footage from 1996 or 1998 on Youtube and NOT ONE mention of Marsha, Sylvia, trans or non-binary anything. Not ONE.

Apparently not so long ago you could fill a massive parade with gay men and lesbian women!

Another children’s book about Saint Marsha.

There's a pedagogical aspect to all this as well. Sometimes people are reluctant to ask non-politically motivated questions about the value of these curricula for young children, for fear of being seen as reactionary/non-progressive/Christian conservative. To what extent can, or should, the brains of the average 5-year-old or 6-year-old grasp a phenomenon such as a Pride parade, or sexual orientation, or being trapped in the wrong body? I know these concepts can be presented in an extremely child-friendly, comprehensible way, but even then kids that age would still lack awareness of the social context (the existence of prejudice, history of oppression and discrimination, and so on). Often the desire of schools and educators to be and appear progressive eclipses educational usefulness. It might be better to introduce discussions about sexual orientation and transgender people at around the age of 10/11, when they might be able to share stories of gay/trans siblings or other family members. The question to always ask is: What do children at age X stand to benefit from acquiring this knowledge at this age?

Kindergartens, elementary schools, and TV programs such as "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers" have been teaching young children about tolerance, and the importance of kindness and sharing and friendship now for generations, and look at where we (still) are as a society.

*Sorry, I should have added some more contemporary "kidfluencers" for the YouTube generation(s).

Curses! Back to the drawing board!