Saturday, May 18, 2024

IN the NEWS - Religious Liberty Sacrificed on the Altar of LGBT

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

"A federal court on Wednesday upheld a Maryland school district
policy
that does not allow parents to opt their young K-5 children out of curriculum about gender identity and sexuality.
In a 2-1 panel decision released by the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, federal judges affirmed a lower court decision denying the request of religious parents to block the policy issued by the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) board in March of 2023.

The Muslim, Jewish, and Christian parents, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued that the district’s refusal to allow their young children to opt out of reading of LGBTQQIAAP2S+-themed books or participation in the curriculum violated their right to raise their children in accordance with their faith and how their faith defines identity and sexuality. Parents also argued the material is not age-appropriate for such young students.

Book titles integrated into the
K-5 curriculum include The Pride
Puppy
, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope. The book The Pride Puppy — which is “the sole test expressly approved for use in pre-Kindergarten and Head Start classrooms” — invited “the three and four-year-old audience … to look for items such as “[drag] king,” “leather,” “lip ring,” “[drag] queen,” and “underwear,”."

Parents also pointed out that the district had provided guidance to teacher’s and staff on how to redirect concerns about the pro-LGBTQ+ content and questions from students.
The order details:
"The guidance also counsels that if a student says that “a girl . . . can only like boys because she’s a girl,” the teacher can “[d]isrupt the either/or thinking by saying something like: actually, people of any gender can like whoever they like. . . . How do you think it would make __(character’s name)__ to hear you say that? Do you think it’s fair for people to decide for us who we can and can’t like?”

Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr. wrote a dissenting opinion saying
he would have overturned the district court ruling and blocked the school district’s policy.

The parents have shown the board’s decision to deny religious opt-outs burdened these parents’ right to exercise their religion and direct the religious upbringing of their children by putting them to the choice of either compromising their religious beliefs or foregoing a public education for their children,” Quattlebaum wrote.
The case is Mahmoud v. McKnight, No. No. 23-1890 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit." 
Breitbart