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.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    91
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    3 months ago

    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!

  • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    3 months ago

    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.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      3 months ago

      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.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      3 months ago

      Some Athiest should sue to get all religious texts banned in that district, using this ruling as direct precedent.

    • P1nkman@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, so men are giving their own rib. That’s kinda gay. Not that I mind being called gay, even though I’m straight (I tried sucking dick. Twice! Not my thing) 🤓

  • E_coli42@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    3 months ago

    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.”

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    3 months ago

    That is when you know you are losing when you have to hide the truth from your kid.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • Slashme@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    3 months ago

    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.”

  • Bwaz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    If there’s a gilod, this guy’s kid will be gay, and not shy about it.

    • Leather@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      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.