The Montgomery County Public School system “underestimates” how much its mandatory gender and sexuality curriculum interferes with parents’ religious exercise, an amicus brief filed today by the Ethics and Public Policy Center said.
“A common theme in the [district court’s opinion] is that the School Board’s sexuality and gender curriculum really isn’t all that bad. As the court sees it, the Board is merely ‘striv[ing] to “provide a culturally responsive . . . curriculum that promotes equity, respect, and civility” and prepare[] students to “[c]onfront and eliminate stereotypes related to individuals’ actual or perceived characteristics,’ including gender identity and sexual orientation,”” the brief reads. “But the storybooks themselves, the Board’s instructions to teachers, and Board members’ comments tell a different story.”
Religious parents represented by Becket Law filed a lawsuit against the district this summer, claiming that the no opt-out policy defies religious liberty: Muslim law forbids believers from publicly discussing intimate acts, and Catholic doctrine affirms the biological truth of two sexes — male and female. Although parents were initially allowed to opt their children out of the lessons, MCPS banned opt-out options earlier this year.
A district court judge denied parents’ appeals to reinstate opt-out in August, ruling that “the plaintiffs’ asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.” Judge Deborah Boardman concluded that “plaintiffs [did not show] that the no-opt-out policy likely will result in the indoctrination of their children.”
Co-authored by EPPC fellows Eric Kniffin and Mary Rice Hasson, the brief “shows that gender ideology is fundamentally incompatible with Christian anthropology and Catholic teaching.”
EPPC references My Rainbow, an elementary school-aged book about affirming an autistic boy’s decision to identify as a girl, and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, a book about a five-year-old girl who thinks she is a boy. MCPS’s curriculum contains more than 20 gender and sexuality-focused books, which teachers must read aloud and conduct classroom discussions on.
“Teaching that a biological male can ‘be’ a female and that subjective beliefs or wishes should take precedence over biological reality is not merely advancing ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’; it is teaching that ‘gender ideology’ is true and that refusing to acquiesce is hurtful and wrong,” the EPPC’s brief said.
The curriculum also teaches that identity is “self-determined based on feelings or self-perception, regardless of the person’s sex (male or female),” the brief states. Along with its gender lessons, MCPS promotes radical transgender resources that claim the “biologically-based definition of sex is not only incorrect but oppressive.”
Gender ideology is contrary to religious teaching, the brief adds.
“On five separate occasions, the district court credits the Board’s claim that its curriculum ‘make[s] sure every student sees themselves [sic] in the curriculum.’ Yet the Board’s curriculum excludes and maligns the Parents and their students, who believe what their religious traditions teaches about the nature of the human person . . . Through these shocking comments, the Board tacitly concedes that — at least on this point — it and the Parents see eye-to-eye: its curriculum is fundamentally incompatible with their religious convictions about human nature and human flourishing.”
Becket appealed its case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to deliver a preliminary decision this fall.