CV NEWS FEED // A Maryland county public school district board involved in a religious freedom lawsuit that awaits a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court has removed two pro-LGBT books from its list that elementary school students must read.
ABC7 News reported on October 28 that Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has “disapproved” the books “Pride Puppy” and “My Rainbow” from the list but, as The Washington Post reported, the books are still in the school’s library.
A district spokesperson told ABC7 News that the reason for the books’ “deselect[ion]” was because “they required additional vocabulary and concept explanations that at this grade level made them less effective teaching tools for meeting the purpose of the standards for English Language Arts.”
Mark Eckstein, who is in a district curriculum stakeholder group, told 7News that the books were initially “meant to supplement a curriculum that was not so good on diversity and inclusion” and are no longer needed in the new curriculum.
“The school district has remedied that and bought a multi-million dollar, elementary ELA curriculum, which is much more inclusive,” he said, according to 7News.
The two books are among the seven that a group of Muslim and Christian parents cited in their lawsuit, Mahmoud v. McKnight, against then-Superintendent Monifa McKnight and the MCPS school board, which was filed with Becket Fund in August 2023. The lawsuit came after the district stopped allowing students to opt out of pro-LGBT discussions or readings.
According to the Religious Freedom Institute, “the school district has refused to provide its internal evaluation that led to their [the books’] removal,” and a group of MCPS elementary school principals previously expressed concern about the books’ content regarding “sexual orientation and gender identity” being inappropriate for students.
“Pride Puppy,” geared towards pre-kindergarten students, is about a family who goes to a “Pride” parade, according to the lawsuit. The book uses the letters of the alphabet to “illustrate what a child might see at a pride parade” and provides a list of words to search for in pictures. Those words include “‘[drag] king’ and ‘[drag] queen,’ ‘leather,’ ‘underwear,’ and the name of a prominent sex worker and gay liberation activist.”
“My Rainbow,” which is geared towards kindergarten through fifth-grade students, focuses on a mom whose child is “transgender,” according to the lawsuit.
“The teacher’s guide for My Rainbow ‘eschews analysis of the various other ways parents might appropriately help their children experiencing gender dysphoria,’” the lawsuit states.
According to Becket Fund, in May of this year, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided against the parents in the lawsuit, ruling that the parents have no right to opt their children out of the book readings.
In September, Becket appealed the ruling for the lawsuit, now Mahmoud v. Taylor, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thomas Taylor is the current superintendent of MCPS.
In October, 25 states and other advocates filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court in support of the parents. The Supreme Court has yet to reject or grant the appeal.
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