Supreme Court Euthanizes ‘Pride Puppy’

They’re just full of culture-war whammies today, that certain Supreme Court Six. In a win for vergogna, in Mahmoud et al. v. Taylor et al. they found that God-bothering homophobic bigot parents have the right to opt their children out of the books public school teachers and librarians can place on their shelves, wishes of the local duly-elected school board be damned.

Back in May of last year, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals down in Richmond denied 2-1 a temporary injunction against the Montgomery County, Maryland, school board in what was then Mahmoud v. McKnight (now Taylor’s head of the school board). A group of fundamentalist Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox parents, with the help of deep-pocketed lawyer support from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (that Alito-aligned group that brought us no birth control if you work for Hobby Lobby), and co-signed by Moms 4 Liberty, sued the school board for burdening their religious expression. How was their First Amendment hurt? Book titles on the approved-reading list with themes of trans and gay people existing and having happy lives surrounded by support and full of love and joy, which are things they do not want their children to know exist.

PREVIOUSLY!

The faith-destroying books were not even part of any curriculum, just sitting on the shelves, available for teachers to use in a lesson plan if they wanted to. Because if a kid has two moms, it’s nice for them to pull a book off the shelves and see themselves reflected!

But the parents were incensed that picking up an alphabet book called “Pride Puppy” and searching the crowd for some “L is for Leather” was going to make little Mary Frances start a Dykes-on-Trikes group in kindergarten, or realize that having two daddies or gender dysphoria are real things that exist in the world. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found theirs to be a stupid argument, because no kid was being coerced even indirectly to act in a way against their faith, but this SCOTUS was ripe, ready, and waiting for a case just like this to come in.

It was a bad sign during arguments when it seemed Justice Neil Gorsuch was convinced that Pride Puppy, a word-search book about a Pride parade, was about some leather-clad bondage hooker:

GORSUCH: That’s the one where they’re supposed to look for the leather and things — and bondage — things like that.

LAWYER: It’s not bondage. It’s a woman in leather.

GORSUCH: Sex worker?

LAWYER: No. That’s not correct. No.

The Court’s ruling means that parents are entitled to notices and the ability to opt out of books with themes they object to. Will school libraries now have a curtained back room like at mom’s old independent video store, where only the children with a pass from their liberal parents can thumb through the tale of the wedding of Uncle Bobby and Jamie, or listen to the audiobook of RuPaul retelling the adventures of Mike Pence’s gay rabbit Marlon Bundo?

Montgomery County is one of the bluest and most diverse spots in all the land, and includes the people’s republic of Takoma Park and bolshevik Bethesda. At the last school board election, voters sent every single conservative-backed candidate packing, including that anti-vax home-schooling Mom 4 Liberty Bethany Mandel, and picked all of the candidates endorsed by the teachers’ union. What about the parents exercising their religious liberty to worship the woke ideology that children should learn to live peacefully and respectfully alongside each other?

Fuck them parents, this is Martha-Ann Alito’s vergogna flag parade!

Samuel Alito delivered the majority opinion, and in case you weren’t already aware how disgusted he is with gay marriage, the opinion drips with disdain.

The books are unmistakably normative. They are designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated, and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.

[…]

The storybooks present same-sex weddings as occasions for great celebration and suggest that the only rubric for determining whether a marriage is acceptable is whether the individuals concerned “love each other.”

Yes, quote marks around “love each other.” Love is not to be applauded, love is to be BOOOOED AT across the LAAGGOOON of the Alito beach house, BOOOO.

Let’s look at some pages from the faith-destroying books that Alito hated so much.

From Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a story about a little girl who frets she’ll “lose” her favorite uncle when he gets married, but then they go camping and swimming, and he and his fiancé tell her she’ll be gaining a second uncle who loves her too.

Prince and Knight, a save-the-kingdom-from-a-dragon story where the brave prince falls for a knight who helps him capture a dragon, and then everyone celebrates and the two men get married and hug.

The suing parents were also incensed by the school board’s guidance on transgender children, which included the sentences:

When we are born, people make a guess about our gender and label us “boy” or “girl” based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong. Our body parts do not decide our gender. Our gender comes from inside—we might feel different than what people tell us we are. We know ourselves best.

And Sam Alito shares those parents’ anger.

The storybooks similarly convey a normative message on the subjects of sex and gender. Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly. The storybooks, however, suggest that it is hurtful, and perhaps even hateful, to hold the view that gender is inextricably bound with biological sex.

Because that is not scientific, evidence-based fact, according to every single major medical organization in the entire world. But Alito has been on a real tear to do his own research when it comes to gender. What things will he do his own research on next, viruses? Climate change? The roundness of the earth? The door is wide open!

Huffed Alito with some extra fact-free bullshit, “the Board has specifically encouraged teachers to reinforce this viewpoint and to reprimand any children who disagree,” a thing that has never happened. What has happened is little shits getting in trouble for bullying their peers, just like when the Alitos bullied their own neighbor and then cried victim about it.

For his part, Thomas keeps calling it sexuality education, like they are showing Long Dong Silver to fifth graders or something, when there is nothing about sexy-sex in any of these books, or gender-affirming medical care, or dangly bits, or anything like that.

Here’s the offending “gender ideology” page.

Something being ABOUT LOVE, and families loving and accepting each other, how disgusting!

Remember how Alito said that gay marriage was going to be the end of the world, and then everybody was going to be marrying the dogs and marrying the cats, and then that didn’t happen? And how he has been obsessed forever with the idea that some woke army is coming to oppress him, and that never happened either? Facts have never gotten in the way of his faith.

Church and state, I now pronounce you married.

[CBS / The Nation]

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