Judge says school must shield kindergartner from all things LGBTQ at Christian dad's demand

A federal ruling has forced a public school to accommodate one Christian parent’s faith-based hostility

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Last June, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative super-majority ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents who don’t want their kids reading books in school with LGBTQ characters and themes could “opt out” due to their religious beliefs.

Now we’re seeing how that ruling is playing out, courtesy of a federal court ruling in Massachusetts. And at the center of it all are images like this one from a children’s book:

Look at it. Look at the absolute HORROR.

As the story goes, “Alan L.” is a “devout Christian” whose five-year-old son began Kindergarten last fall at Joseph Estabrook Elementary School. Almost immediately, Alan told the teacher he was concerned about the curriculum and demanded specific syllabi for his son’s classes. This isn’t college. There are no hyper-specific curricular details, just overviews. And so Alan demanded his son be allowed to “opt out” from “ANY DEI curriculum.”

The school said no because… what the hell did that even mean? They told him his complaint wasn’t tied to his religious beliefs, so they weren’t obliged to go along with it, and that he didn’t include any specifics about what he had problems with. Alan wrote back and said he and his son were “both Christians,” as if that should settle the matter.

Alan later sent a more specific demand that his son be exempt from anything at school covering “sexual orientation or gender identity.” But again, that’s not a specific request. If their son read a book that involved straight, cisgender parents, that would technically imply both an orientation and identity… so no books at all? It was an impossible request to fulfill. The school told him in a letter, “Please note that there is no sexual education and human sexuality education in Kindergarten.”

Alan’s lawyer then stepped in to say the son should be removed from any lessons “that normalize or promote LGBTQ identities or lifestyles.” They eventually submitted examples from books being read in school as evidence of that promotion.

Like these from Families, Families, Families! by Suzanne Lang all about the different kinds of families children might have, all because the author included the fact that “some children have two dads” and “some children have two mothers.”

Horrifying. Truly.

That book also ends with the line, “[I]f you love each other, then you are a family.” This apparently goes against everything Jesus teaches conservative Christians.

And then there are these two images from All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold, a book about how all kids, regardless of background, have a place in their community. As illustrated in the book, that community includes a same-sex couple that makes the horrible mistake of existing. Also, one of the lesbian moms appears to be pregnant. Which raises all kinds of questions... that literally no child is going to be asking.

Terrifying stuff. Obviously, just the worst kind of leftist propaganda.

Anyway, those two books were part of the school’s Kindergarten curriculum, though Alan and his lawyer admitted in legal documents that while the books “have been used in the classroom,” it was not clear “whether or not they were actually shown” to Alan’s son.

(Alan’s lawsuit also included descriptions of eight other books “to which he objects”… even though there was no evidence they were even used in the classroom at all. They’re just random books cited in the Mahmoud case.)

The district told the court that this was all an absurd argument. First of all, those books don’t say anything about same-sex marriage at all:

Setting aside the fact that these images depict creatures that neither marry, nor practice religion, nor operate on a system of morals, the book does not reference gay marriage or hold out same-sex couples or any other potential family grouping as being morally correct or equivalent to same-sex marriages. It simply holds them out as…in existence. While Plaintiff might have sincerely held religious beliefs as to what a marriage is, there is no reference to the roosters’ or koalas’ marital status and no clarifying information is provided to eliminate the possibility, e.g., that one of those two roosters or koalas is a stepfather or stepmother, or a biological versus adoptive parent.

…

Neither Families, Families, Families! nor All Are Welcome instruct its audience on how to become gay, or that being gay is something that should be lauded or encouraged, or is morally correct. Both, in the best-case scenario for Plaintiff, are geared toward mere tolerance—i.e., the acceptance of those who are different from us as being part of our world. They are not the tutorials on the moral equivalency of one’s gayness that Plaintiff would have this Court believe.

Second, as Alan suggested, there was no proof the child in question was even exposed to the two books at the center of this case! The district said the child has an IEP, an Individualized Education Program, that requires him to be separated from his classmates: “[The child] spends more of his school day outside his general-education Kindergarten classroom than inside it.” And when “All Are Welcome” was read to the children, the District added, it happened at a time when the boy is “typically out of the general-education classroom.” Ditto with the other books.

What about the “Kindergarten DEI Curriculum” Alan objected to? The school told him that demand was still way too broad, so they said no, but they gave Alan a chance to look at the curriculum and classroom books so he could be specific about which ones he wanted his son to avoid.

He later said in an affidavit:

[My demand letter] further identified objectionable materials in the DEI and Social Studies curricula—including Say Something, You Have a Voice, Love Makes a Family, Julian Is a Mermaid, and This Day in June—that promote secular moral values, LGBTQ themes, or activism contrary to our faith.

This message directly contradicts the biblical teaching about marriage and family that I am working to instill in [my son] J.L. The video presents same-sex relationships as a normal and acceptable form of family structure—indeed, as morally equivalent to marriage between one man and one woman.

This is precisely the type of content I had been trying to prevent J.L. from being exposed to through my repeated opt-out requests. The school showed this video to my five-year-old child despite having received multiple written communications from me explaining my religious objections to such content.

…

As a direct result of the school’s actions, J.L. has been exposed to moral instruction about marriage, sexuality, and family that directly contradicts the biblical teachings in which our family believes.

At age five, J.L. cannot understand or process the conflict between what the school is teaching and what we teach at home. J.L. cannot critically evaluate competing moral claims. As any child does, J.L. simply absorbs what trusted authority figures—including teachers—say.

…

I have now had to engage in “damage control” with my five-year-old child. I have been forced to be prepared to discuss sensitive topics related to sexuality, marriage, and family structures much earlier than I wanted to or believe is appropriate for my child’s age and maturity level.

To be clear, at no point did the school said anything about same-sex couples other than acknowledging their existence. There sure as hell wasn’t anything sexual presented to children. But because those same-sex families were not overtly condemned, Alan needed to provide “damage control” because there was now a possibility his son might grow up thinking that gay people are people.

The district pushed back against that ridiculous argument too:

Plaintiff claims he’s had to engage in “damage control,” yet his declaration lacks any statements describing any impact these read-alouds had on J.L. or how J.L.’s “innocence on these subjects has been compromised.”

No kidding. Was Alan upset because J.L. came home one day a little kinder than before? (Answer: No because J.L. may not have been in the classroom at all, a detail that seemed to be ignored as this case proceeded through the court.)

But this is the kind of bigotry that conservative Christians are shoving on teachers who simply want students to know they’re loved, that there are different kinds of families out there, and that they will always be accepted in their schools.

If you need to do “damage control” because your child risks becoming too kind and loving toward people who aren’t just like him, then your religion is the problem.

In any case, because the Supreme Court said parents can remove their kids from the classroom for religious reasons, U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV (a George W. Bush appointee) said the district had no choice but to comply with Alan’s wishes.

This case is squarely controlled by Mahmoud. As in that case, a parent has objected to his child being shown certain materials at school concerning LGBTQ+ relationships or values on the ground that the materials pose a threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices the parent wants to instill in his child. As in that case, the school has indicated that it intends to continue showing the child at least some of the materials to which the parent objects. And as in that case, the parent seeks a preliminary injunction on the basis that the school’s failure to provide him notice and a reasonable opportunity to opt his child out of classroom instruction utilizing those materials violates his free-exercise rights.

…

To be sure, there are some factual differences between this case and Mahmoud, but none present a principled basis for a different outcome here.

The actual injunction is almost comical in terms of how much the school district needs to accommodate Alan’s bigotry. It says the district must make sure Alan’s son isn’t “taught or otherwise exposed” to any of the books or material Alan objected to. It also says that the district needs to send Alan, in advance, anything else that might “depict or describe LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or activities, or LGBTQ+ political or social advocacy.”

In short, Alan now has veto power over any material his son may come across that merely suggests LGBTQ people are a part of society. Forget advocacy. Forget celebration. Forget civil rights. If there’s a book with a gay character in it—even one where that person is just shown in the background and isn’t even given a name—Alan needs to be warned in advance so he can take steps to make sure his son never sees it.

Furthermore, if Alan doesn’t want his son exposed to that material, the judge says the district needs to make “reasonable efforts to ensure” the son gets “reasonable and age-appropriate alternative instruction.”

Alan’s faith-based hate against LGBTQ people means the teachers need to do more work because he doesn’t want his son growing up to be anything but a Christian hate-monger like himself. The same could be said about the right-wing legal groups representing him, the American Center for Law and Justice and the Massachusetts Family Institute.

The problem here isn’t the judge, whose hands are tied. It’s the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, which has given people like Alan veto power over perfectly decent curricular decisions. He’s a nightmare parent and the sort of person who would rather ruin his son’s public school experience rather than send the child to a bigoted private Christian school where that kind of hate is the default.

This is the problem when “parental rights” are elevated over public education. That’s what the Supreme Court has been doing by giving conservative Christians veto power over basic humanity. When the mere depiction of LGBTQ people is framed as a personal injury, the law is no longer protecting religious freedom. It’s just enforcing religious fragility, the idea that public schools always need to work around the most intolerant parent in the system. It’s far easier to just never acknowledge that different people exist, which is the goal of Christian parents like Alan.

He doesn’t need evidence that his son was harmed. He doesn’t need evidence that the school was promoting liberal ideology. He just needs to lie about both—something his faith fully accommodates—and the school district has no choice but to go along with it.

Setting aside the frustrating legal ruling, though, let’s not forget what this is really about: the conservative Christian belief that children are harmed by knowing that LGBTQ people exist, form families, and belong in the world. They don’t like children learning about tolerance or empathy because their faith teaches them to reject both while embracing hate and fear.

If your worldview collapses the moment a five-year-old learns that some kids have two moms, the problem isn’t the book. It’s your faith. It’s your church. It’s anyone in your religious network that praises you for fighting the good fight.

Thankfully, while Alan’s son won’t get the education he deserves, that doesn’t mean everyone else has to suffer too. Public schools aren’t catechism classes. They don’t need to protect other children from the supposed scourge of pluralism. They exist to prepare students for life in a diverse democracy, and that’s what this district is doing, even if it has to work around the irrational demands from one hate-fueled Christian parent.

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