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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:
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:
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 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.
Thots and Q's:
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.
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.
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.
It's a curious problem I think. I am against most of that stuff being taught in school but the whole "teach the controversy" thing must have some limits. What would my enemies do with this veto? I'm not so sure the opt out is the correct thing to demand, the battlefield should surely be the curriculum itself.
Yes, an opt-out liter just cedes the territory to the attackers, and you know they won't honour it the second they get the power. That's why my response was ignoring the sophistry at court and asking "how did we get to this point, and how do we stop it happening again?"
The only answers to that question, at this point, involve literal bullets.
Well, now that I'm off ban, to clarify: I mean less "2nd amendment solutions," more Suharto.
How we stop it happening again is we get a Caesar Augustus or a Bonaparte, with the loyalty of the warriors, and the willingness to use them to purge the enemy. It's "tanks in Harvard yard" as part of going Henry VIII (or Qin Shi Huangdi) on academia.
Do you remember the last time you were warned for toeing this particular line?
Yeah, you’re crossing it.
Unlike your extensive history of high-effort, high-quality comments on political polarization, there’s nothing here. Nothing to engage with, nothing to discuss. It’s snarling at best and a call to action at worst.
I’m going to go with a one-day ban pending discussion with the team.
Calls for violence can be engaged with. There's the violence is never a solution, view. There's the sometimes violence is the only solution, view and now it's timely or untimely. There's violence as a political tool.
Violence is never the solution for the weak, which is what the right is. If anyone who is right-leaning engages with violent methods, people will make an example out of him and you will see far worse kinds of censorship than 2021 but for decades.
Moldbug was right when he called violence a false path to power.
Does that include Trump sending in the Marines? Or a future President Vance rolling tanks into Harvard yard a la Yarvin?
It mostly relates to acquistion of power, so if you can send tanks to harvard, you have likely already won, therefore any violence now is not gonna get you screwed over. Simialr to protests, protests are a way of showing your power, not acquiring it.
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