Why did Maryland’s Montgomery County insist on pushing its sexual morality on all students, including Muslims and Coptic Christians?
Some liberals lamenting Montgomery County’s Supreme Court loss in Mahmoud v. Taylor expressed befuddlement: Why did the county deny parents the right to opt out of its pro-gay, pro-transgender sex ed stories? Why did the county insist on fighting all the way to the Supreme Court?
As a refugee from Montgomery County, I have an answer: The county’s leadership sees religion as its enemy and harbors animus toward religious people.
Let’s start with the specifics about this case:
Montgomery County Public Schools is a massive suburban school district outside Washington, D.C., with more than 160,000 students. Montgomery County’s council and school board are filled 100% with liberal Democrats, but the county’s school parents are incredibly diverse, especially on the score of religion.
In recent years, MCPS moved a bunch of books on sex, gender, and sexuality into the main literature curriculum. These books pushed a very specific ideology: Your biology does not determine your gender; there are more than two genders; there is no meaningful distinction between same-sex relationships and heterosexual ones; sexuality has no necessary relationship with sex, marriage, and family formation but is instead a matter of self-expression.
These are basically religious beliefs held by the people in charge of Montgomery County and in direct contradiction to most understandings of all the Abrahamic faiths. MCPS prides itself on tolerance and diversity, so at first, the school district gave parents notice so that they could opt their first graders out of the lessons on gay pride parades, with leather outfits spotlighted, and preaching of transgenderism.
As you might guess, lots of parents opted out, either because the county was trying to undermine their values and worldview directly, or simply because they didn’t want sexuality lessons for their 6-year-olds. As a result, MCPS made the sexuality and gender lessons mandatory.
Why would the county ignite such a culture war?
It’s not a mystery: The governing class of Montgomery County believes that it should undermine religious values because it believes that religion is bad. It believes it is the job of the public schools to replace the parents’ religious worldview and belief systems with its own secular, individualist worldview.
When Muslim parents and students petitioned the county government, seeking an opt-out, liberal Councilwoman Kristin Mink attacked their viewpoint as the position of “white supremacists and outright bigots.” (She later issued a non-apology.)
When Muslim students asked the school board for the right to opt out, liberal school board member Lynne Harris said she felt “kind of sorry” and suggested the girl was simply “parroting dogma” from her parents.
This is hardly the only evidence of anti-religious animus. Let’s go back a few years.
In the spring of 2020, Montgomery County was one of the most locked-down places in America. Then, the county slowly started to reopen in May, but it refused to allow even outdoor church services. Home Depot was open, but nobody was allowed to gather, even outdoors, masked, and distanced, to pray. Amid this ban on religious gatherings, the county government promoted and supported Black Lives Matter protests.
Later that summer, Montgomery County was one of the only municipalities in America that tried to bar Jewish and Catholic schools from opening, and emails revealed the county officials’ disdain for these schools and the parents who send their children there.
A few months later, the county created a COVID vaccine mandate for employees that didn’t allow for a religious exemption.
SUPREME COURT SIDES WITH PARENTS WHO WANT TO OPT OUT KIDS OF LGBT SCHOOL BOOKS
There’s other evidence, too, but the above sure shows a pattern: The people in charge of Montgomery County dislike religion and try to use their power to suppress the exercise of religion.
Thank God they lost in court.