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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   30733 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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In lieu of the normal SCOTUS Mottezins... wake up, honey, the Culture War went to court again. Arguments for Mahmoud v. Taylor just dropped (PDF). A less oppressive SCOTUSblog write up here.

Obligatory disclaimer that I do not know anything. The gist of the case:

  • In 2022 Montgomery County, a suburb of DC, approved a number of LGBTQ books for the curriculum. They include these books and other materials from ages as early as 3-4 and up.
  • A bunch of parents cite religious reasons to opt-out of this part of the curriculum. This is in line with Montgomery's historical policy and the policy of neighboring counties. Opt-outs for religious reasons are normal for things like sex education and health classes that include it around the country.
  • Depending who you believe, so many parents chose to opt-out that the district had no choice but to change policy, or the district was so ideologically wedded to the material that they changed the policy. Either way, the county says no more opt-outs. Lawsuit commences. It goes up the chain and here we are.

I know we have some skeptics of "woke" curriculum, so for a probably not unbiased overview of the material, BECKET, the religious freedom legal advocacy non-profit backing the plaintiffs, provides examples in an X thread. They also provide a dropbox link to some of the material in question. In one tweet they claim:

For example, one book tasks three- and four-year-olds to search for images from a word list that includes “intersex flag,” “drag queen,” “underwear,” “leather,” and the name of a celebrated LGBTQ activist and sex worker.

Another book advocates a child-knows-best approach to gender transitioning, telling students that a decision to transition doesn’t have to “make sense.”

Teachers are instructed to say doctors only “guess” when identifying a newborn’s sex anyway

The Justices had read the books in question. Kavanaugh acknowledged Schoenfeld, representing Montgomery County, had "a tough case to argue".

The county asserted that mandatory exposure to material, like a teacher reading a book out loud, is not coercion (or a burden?) that violates a free exercise of religion. Sotomayor seemed to support this position. Schoenfeld, arguing for Montgomery County, said these books that are part of a curriculum that preach uncontroversial values like civility and inclusivity. Alito, skeptical, said Uncle Bobby's Wedding had a clear moral message beyond civility or inclusivity.

The liberal justices were interested in clarification on what Baxter, arguing for the parents, thought the limits were to. What limits are placed on parents with regards to religious opt-outs? Kagan was worried about the opening of the floodgates. Sotomayor drew a line to parental objection to 'biographical material about women who have been recognized for achievements outside of their home' and asked if the opt-out should extend to material on stuff like inter-faith marriage. Baxter didn't give well-defined lines, but said nah, we figured this out.

Sincerity of belief is one requirement for compelled opt-outs. The belief can't be "philosophical" or "political" it has to a sincere religious belief. Age was discussed as another consideration. Material that may offend religious belief to (the parents of?) a 16 year old does not apply the same sort of burden as it does to a 5 year old, because a 16 year old is more capable of being "merely exposed" rather than "indoctrinated". A word Eric Baxter, arguing for the parents, used several times and Justice Barrett used twice.

Eric Baxter also stabbed at the district's position that there was ever an administrative issue at all. Chief Justice Roberts agreed and seemed to question whether the school's actions were pretext. Baxter had one exchange (pg. 40-42 pdf) with Kavanaugh who, "mystified as a life-long resident of the county [as to] how it came to this", asked for background.

Baxter: That's right. Hundreds of parents complained. These were mostly according to news articles mostly families from Muslim faith and Ethiopian Orthodox who were objecting.

B: When they-- when they spoke to the Board, the Board accused them of using their religious beliefs as another reason to hate, accused a young Muslim girl of parroting her parents' dogma, and then accused the parents of aligning with racist xenophobes and white supremacists.

B: And so, again, there's no question in this case that there is a burden, that it was imposed with animosity, and that it's discriminating against our clients because of their religious beliefs.

Baxter also pointed at ongoing opt-out polices in neighboring counties and different ones in Montgomery itself. He clarified the relevance of Wisconsin v. Yoder where it was found strict scrutiny should be applied to protect religious freedom. One example of an ongoing opt-out policy in Montgomery allowed parents to opt their children out of material that showed the prophet Mohammed.

ACB: .....What is your take on that and how we think about this, whether this really is just about exposure and civility and learning to function in a multi-cultural and diverse society and how much of it is about influence or as Petitioners would say indoctrination?

Schoenfeld: .....The school the express directive from the school is you don't need to understand your peers, you don't need to agree with them, you don't need to affirm with them, but you do need to treat them with respect.

Thots and Q's:

  • Is it necessary to introduce concepts that include queer and gender ideology to children in public school? Why, why not? At what age would the introduction be appropriate or inappropriate?

The eternal fight over what the state uses to fill children's minds in a land of compulsory attendance is main conflict, even if this legal question is one of what a compromise should look given religious freedoms.

  • A competent school district should account for the addition of new, potentially controversial or sensitive material.

It can do so in a few different ways and avoid a trip to SCOTUS. I support preaching civility and inclusivity to children. There are thousands children's books that preach these things without drag queens or bondage. In an ideal world, knowledge of and tolerance for queer people can also be taught without, what I would call, the excess. Schools can also program curriculum to account for opt-outs when it comes to touchy subjects.

Sex education can be crammed into 1 hour classes for a week of the year. This allows parents to opt-out without placing an unmanageable burden on the administration. A curriculum that requires teachers to read a number of controversial book at least 5 times each a year is a curriculum designed to, intentionally or not, make opt-outs onerous. In this case it was so onerous and so controversial that Montgomery was compelled to change the policy. Which is an administrative failure even if one doesn't believe it to be ideologically motivated.

  • It may be worth pointing out that coverage from outlets like NPR didn't include the name of the case or a description of the plaintiffs that brought it.

I've seen it argued both ways. That outlets notoriously don't link cases or share case names, but in this case the plaintiffs -- a mixture of Muslim, Christian, Jewish parents -- the absence is notable. Were this an evangelical push we could expect some evangelical bashing.

The belief can't be "philosophical" or "political" it has to a sincere religious belief.

What is the difference between a sincere belief derived from a religious framework vs a sincere belief derived from a philosophical one and why is religion given more weight in this regard? If i said that I believe in the supremacy of the biological imperative, and that queer doctrine is blasphemous in this regard, is this considered to be philosophical and therefore unreasonable? What if I said I sincerely believe that the imperative is a facet of God's will? Has my belief now become acceptable in the court's eyes now that I've rhetorically laundered it?

What is the difference between a sincere belief derived from a religious framework vs a sincere belief derived from a philosophical one and why is religion given more weight in this regard?

Because when the foundation of the relevant rules were written (ie, the Constitution), there was less of a distinction drawn between those categories and approximately everyone was religious. I'll even count Jefferson despite him being (probably? there's better historians than I around here to correct me) the least religious Founder.

There are times that they're given roughly equal weight, like conscientious objection, but even then having a religious framework makes your argument easier because it provides evidence beyond your own biases and desires.

Am I the only one that wants to go back in time with a tablet, and show the American founders a few videos?

I want to do the opposite; go back to the Philadelphia Convention, offer to take a handful of delegates to the future, let them stay for one year, then send them back to tell their fellows about how their ideas play out.

I want to do the opposite; go back to the Philadelphia Convention, offer to take a handful of delegates to the future, let them stay for one year, then send them back to tell their fellows about how their ideas play out.

Which year? Do you think they would interpret Nixon's resignation as checks and balances succeeding or failing?

I'm frankly quite unsure what the effect of "we will create the most powerful empire in the history of man and it will engender sin on scales previously unheard of" would wreak on the XVIIIth century colonial psyche.

They were all romaboos so maybe they'd understand it in that way? But then again it plays into Christian eschatology to an almost frightening degree, and being the progenitors of the Whore of Babylon as hardcore protestants is unsettling to say the least.

I'd tag along on the trip, would be quite Enlightening I'm sure.

Because evangelism by the sword is still quite immediate and present in the modern world and it is a simple pragmatic acceptance of the fact that these beliefs are strong enough for people to die for. (How would a postmodern martyr even look like?)

How would a postmodern martyr even look like?

Sacrificing everyone and everything they hold control over for fleeting pleasures seems the go-to.

Punkish rebellion for its own sake with no actual goals a close second.

What is the difference between a sincere belief derived from a religious framework vs a sincere belief derived from a philosophical one and why is religion given more weight in this regard?

Legal scholar and philosopher Brian Leiter has a whole book on just that topic, by the somewhat trollish title of Why Tolerate Religion?. His conclusion is the opposite of what people often assume it's going to be based on the title - that all such "claims of conscience" should be treated with equal (and fairly high) respect in this regard, rather than religion having its own special claim to "tolerance" that isn't accorded to anything else.

They are making a legal argument, not a political or moral one; the first amendment to the U.S. constitution calls out religion specifically. This is the flip side of a related issue, that the Constitution (or at least constitutional jurisprudence) does not sufficiently limit the imposition of irreligious totalizing ideologies because they are not an “establishment of religion.” In the same way, violating a philosophical commitment is not “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Applying the religion clauses of the first amendment is already complicated in a country as socially and religiously diverse as America has become. Consider Masterpiece Cakeshop, whose proprietor’s sincere religious beliefs are not in doubt: He won at the Supreme Court on the grounds that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was motivated by demonstrable animus against his religion, and even then the decision was 7–2.

This is the flip side of a related issue, that the Constitution (or at least constitutional jurisprudence) does not sufficiently limit the imposition of irreligious totalizing ideologies because they are not an “establishment of religion.”

I'm glad that you brought this up because I thought of this as well while writing my post but didn't know how to word it. It has been rightly observed that the woke package of beliefs and its adherents could be interpreted as religious in nature and have utterly bypassed government safeguards w/r/t church and state.

he won only insofar as he was immediately targeted for other lawsuits on similar grounds. Yay.

Yeah, Colorado was so openly hateful they got to dodge the substantive ruling. Maybe they'll get there someday.

I'd wager that the difference is largely practical.

If there's a large group of people that believe in a source of objective truth and mortality deeper than any human logic, no propaganda will sway them from its commandments. And if you try, you get martyrs and religious warfare. So, the government lets them swing their fists until they hit someone else's nose.

For non-thesists, however, while their beliefs can be self-consistent within an axiomatic system by definition there's no source of irrational/beyond-rational (depending on your viewpoint) certainty in the axioms they use. Therefore, the government can reasonably bet on trying to shift their axioms-- especially since they're not in any sort of community that might organize retaliation.

(If atheists get together to decide on objective moral principles they're going to set in stone and propagate forever... then congratulations, they've re-invented religion and become entitled to the same protections. See: the "Church of Satan" people.)

And this system works much better at making religious people productive members of society(which they by and large want to do) than Laicite or totalizing state ideology.

It was clearly practical historically. I can see why a polity of a certain age would have specifically enshrined religious protections during its founding.

I'm not sure how practical it is now given the decline of religion and the rise of religions that are totally servile to CURRENT_YEAR mores and the existence of secular ideologies like Marxism and nationalism that are clearly capable of motivating stubborn behavior.

What is the difference between a sincere belief derived from a religious framework vs a sincere belief derived from a philosophical one and why is religion given more weight in this regard? If i said that I believe in the supremacy of the biological imperative, and that queer doctrine is blasphemous in this regard, is this considered to be philosophical and therefore unreasonable?

My understanding is that, legally speaking, religious belief and expression is a uniquely protected category in the US. Political or philosophical beliefs are not. If you oppose queer doctrine on political grounds, then you can't expect SCOTUS to grant you their time. Religious beliefs grant you special protections from the government.

What if I said I sincerely believe that the imperative is a facet of God's will? Has my belief now become acceptable in the court's eyes now that I've rhetorically laundered it?

I think a metaphysical grounding helps your case. Unless I'm mistaken, this is one of the ways to differentiate a religious and philosophical belief. But I know someone will have a more complete answer for you. This seems like it should be one of the more thoroughly investigated ideas in US law.

Philosophy is “because I said so”.

Religion is “because my God said so”.

Rightly or wrongly, more weight has historically been accorded to the latter.

Rightly or wrongly, more weight has historically been accorded to the latter.

I suppose it's more difficult to game the system with an avowed commitment to the facially irrational than with a claim of independent thought above the law.

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