Supreme Court hears case of dirty school books (04-22-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. Full disclosure, I did not listen in on the Supreme Court oral arguments that were heard on this case, but I'm going to talk with you as if I did. But I mean, we have the details of the case, but I did not listen to the oral arguments that were heard about the debate over whether elementary schools can skip parental notice when the teachers are reading the dirty books to your kids. Okay, so here's the CNN story for Billy MoG's mogus magis moj How would you pronounce that m O G E s mojes. Billy Mogis, it's a woman and for her, the fight with a Washington, DC area school district over the reading of LGB t Q plus books in elementary school as a matter of faith. She said, quote, we have no hate for anyone. She says. What we're saying is that we as parents do not want our children to be exposed to these ideas at this age because they are not ready for it. She is one of the Christian parents who sued Maryland's largest school district over the policy in a case that has gone to the US Supreme Court. But for the Montgomery COUNTYBLIC schools and for civil rights groups, giving way to mojes would lead to an administrative nightmare. It would require teachers to foresee and alert parents to any concept discussed in the classroom that might possibly conflict with their religious beliefs. See, this is malicious compliance, That's what this is. This is a form of malicious compliance. Like I can't possibly know that I'm going to, you know, bring this book into the classroom and do a story time reading session with your six year old? How could I possibly know the if only teachers, I have an idea? How about this? Because you know me, I'm all about solutions. How about we have teachers draw up I don't know, like some sort of an agenda, like a plan. Teachers could have like a plan, and then you would know what they're going to be teaching throughout the semester and throughout the year and call it like a lesson plan or something. We could Yeah, we could draw those up, and then if you want to teach the dirty books, we would know that the dirty books are on your lesson plan, right, because there isn't any reason why you should just, like on a whim, pick up the story about you know, Johnny has two dads to read to the the second graders. That shouldn't be something that's just oh, you know what, I was planning this other thing. But instead, you know, let's let's learn about transgenderism. Right. You realize these topics are not popular to be read to young kids, right, And if you are not aware of this, then I would submit you should not be teaching the youth because it indicates you either have an ideological blind spot or you are not very bright. Okay, so I don't think you should be charged with teaching the future generations. By the way, I just saw where was it Linda McMahon, the education secretary. She said something like only forty percent of the kids can read a grade level in third grade like that, like whatever you're doing, stop doing it. Okay, it's not working. So this is the malicious compliance aspect of it, because they say, oh my gosh, if we have to, we have to stop the class every single time we would have to, we would have to look ahead and know that your little kid is asking about Johnny's two dads like no, and North Carolina lawmakers actually had this debate when they were going over this issue what last year because this is what is thrown out there as some sort of an excuse. It's not persuasive. Okay, it's not persuasive at all. And that's why North Carolina lawmakers recognizing that it's not persuasive, they said, obviously, if something comes up in the class time, when you know, a kid raises their hand and says, you know, hey, what's the deal with this, then the teacher can say something in response to that. But the teacher is not to bust out gender queer and start reading it to your third graders. Parents need to know what it is that you are teaching their kids. And I'm sorry if you feel like you know you're the professional and you should be trusted, I'm sorry, I really am. I am sorry, but recognize where we are. Those days are long gone for a variety of reasons. If I ever got in trouble, my parents took the side of the teacher immediately. Those days are gone. And I know, like I have family, me a lot, most of my family members are teachers, and they say, like some of the parents are like they're the worst. They oh, no, not my Johnny. He wouldn't do that, right, And they fight back on any kind of report that's negative about their kid, that their kid couldn't possibly do this bad thing, you know, and teachers have to deal with that aspect of it as well. But particularly regarding these books, the only ones that are the only teachers or librarians that are pushing this stuff are activists. They are the only ones left because when the laws start getting passed that say you can't do this sort of thing, and parents are starting to protest, most teachers who are not activists, they would recognize if they weren't already like not on board with the program in the in first place, they would have recognized and been like, yeah, this is this is not worth it. We got backlash coming, this is not worth it, So I'm not going to do this. You know, these books as part of the curriculum. I'm not going to do it as part of my lesson plan. The only ones that are still doing it are doing it in defiance of the parental opposition and the legislative opposition. And that means that you are doing it for an ideological reason, which means you really want these kids who are not yours. You really want those kids to learn about something because you think it's important that they know this stuff, even though their parents are like, they're too young for that. I don't want you teaching my kid that. I don't need you teaching my kid about incest and rape and gay sex or any sex. You shouldn't be talking about that with my third grader. So the Supreme Court is now weighing these weighing this case, right, these these arguments that on the one hand, you have parents that are claiming that this violates their faith. They don't want their kid being exposed to some of this stuff. And on the other hand, you got the government saying we have to be able to expose your kid to this stuff because otherwise we would have to do a lot more paperwork and the lesson plans would be more difficult to draw. Up. It creates an administrative burden for us. So sorry, we have to expose your kids to transgenderism. The Supreme Court weighing these arguments in the most significant religious appeal that justices have confronted in years, a case that sweeps in the struggle over transgender rights, the ability of parents to influence school curriculum, and questions about the role of faith in the public sphere. This is one of the things that the activist crowd on the left does not either understand or they refuse to a knowledge, which is Christians are parents too, and in a government run system, they too can affect the curriculum. You do not own the curriculum because you are a secularist or an atheist or something that you don't own the curriculum. Sorry, you don't. It is a public school, and that means people in the public with whom you disagree they get to have an influence too. That's the deal. See, this isn't about, you know, public education, It's about an education system that is controlled by the left. What have I always said about the K twelve government model? The problem is the model. People keep trying to fix this thing. They keep trying to make tweaks and pass policies, and we'll do this and direct that. The problem is the model. And until the society recognizes that, I don't think this gets any better. We're going to keep having these fights, all right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription I use the vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription then not only helps my but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. Alrighty, So the Supreme Court hearing this case today about parental rights and whether a school district should be allowed to read sexually graphic or inappropriate or age inappropriate material to your kid, or should you be able to opt out in the school district Montgomery Montgomery County public schools in Maryland. They're like, we can't possibly manage this kind of an opt out system. The parents who are suing are relying in part on a nineteen seventy two president in which the Supreme Court allowed Amish families to remove their children from school after the eighth grade. This was despite a law in Wisconsin that required students to remain enrolled in school until they were sixteen. So the Amish were like, no, we take our kids out, you don't get to keep them. And it went to the US Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, there are a lot it's their religious. Faith, they can take them out. There's also another component here, and I don't know if it was addressed in the oral arguments. I did not see it addressed in this CNN article which is about the coercive nature of the K twelve setting, which was really, if I recall correctly, it was the lynchpin in the arguments about saying the pledge before school starts, you know, at the beginning of the school day, Like when I was growing up, we would we'd all stand in the you know, stand up at our desks, whether it was elementary, junior, high, high school, whatever, everybody would stand, we would do the pledge of allegiance. And then that was struck down. And the reason why was because it was compelled speech. Because the very nature of the K twelve government school setting is coercive for the kids. Simply being in that environment is a coercive factor. So one of the parents suing Billy Mojetz stresses that she is not asking the schools to stop reading the material, only to allow parents with religious objections to opt their students out. So this isn't even this should lay beaar the lie that oh, book bend, book ben She's not even trying to ban the books. She's not even saying, you know, put up a special section over there behind like a velvet rope or something that my kid doesn't get access to without my permission. She's not even saying that, she's just saying, I want to be able to take my kid out if you're going to read this kind of material to them. Most states, including Maryland, already have law in place allowing parents to pull their children from sex education. Montgomery County schools originally permitted opt outs, so they used to do this, but then they said. It's just it's unworkable. We just we cannot figure out how to not read this stuff to your kid. Oh, it's just too it's just unworkable. Some schools, for example, experienced unsustainably high numbers of absent students, and so they took that as an excuse to force them to listen to the material, rather than an indication that a lot of kids and parents didn't want. To hear it. The school district argues that the need to shuttle students in and out of the classroom would moreover disrupt those classrooms. Okay, so moving the kids around in the classrooms is going to be it's going to be so unworkable. It's so disruptive because you have so many kids that don't want to participate, or their parents don't want them to participate, or whatever. I'm going to offer a potential solution, don't read the books. How about that. If you're noticing these problems with this kind of thing, then maybe you just don't do the kind. Of thing right. But we have to pete. See. Aha, there you go. That's the proof that you are an activist, not a teacher. No parent is opting their kid out of the multiplication tables. They're opting their kids out of this stuff, and you finding excuses to force the parents and their kids to hear the stuff that they don't want to hear, to the point where it's disrupting your classes because so many kids don't want to participate paid in it. That should be the signal to you that you should not be doing this thing. But the fact that you are putting your own desire to indoctrinate i'm sorry to educate over what the parent wants, that makes you the activist. As part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County approved a handful of books, or as I like to say, they curated some books. See, because that's what libraries do. They curate Because there are a lot of books in the world. You may not be aware of this. People have been writing books for a really long time, like thousands of years almost now, so they've been writing a lot of books. There are lots of printed copies of these books. They're all over the place, and you do not have enough space on the shelves to house all of the books ever written. So you have to choose which books you want to have in your library. You have to choose which books you want to read to the kids so they curate that. I don't accuse you of banning the books that you decided not to include in your curriculum. I didn't accuse you of banning well, I don't know to kill a mockingbird when you cut it from your curriculum. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Ashville is your connection. 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Call her text eight two eight, three, six, seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Got some messages on the Twitter machine. These are Pete tweets from It's all a distraction, who says, let's replace the dirty books with the Bible and see if the teachers and the ACLU would be okay with that. I doubt it. Eric says, it must make things easy to be able to mandate your product after the market overwhelmingly rejects it. Nobody wants to read these books, I know. Let's put them in the classrooms, chu chin. So, as part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County approved, or as I say, curated, a handful of books in twenty twenty two that are at issue in the case. Okay, so this is a new development. One is called Prince and Knight. It tells the story of a prince, and the prince does not want to marry any of the princesses in his realm, but he does fall in love with a knight, a little dude on dude action. There. Another's called Born Ready. It tells the story of Penelope, a character who likes skateboarding and wearing Beggy jeans, so obviously Penelope is a dude. When Penelope tells his mother this is CNN, tells his mother that he is a boy, he is accepted. When Penelope's brother questions Penelope's gender identity, their mother hugs both children and whispers. Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love. The school district told the court that the books are used like any other book in curriculum, placed on the shelves for students to find on their own, and also available for teachers to incorporate into reading groups or read alouds at their discussion for a discretion. Yeah, so we just put them on the shelves. They were just over there, and if a kid happens to stumble across the entire wing of the LGBT plus variety of books, then they will be able to find them. But it's totally self directed, unless, of course, like I'm choosing to read it to your kid. What's the problem. The district and its allies argue that simply exposing students to ideas can't possibly be a burden on religion. That well, if the religion teaches you that you are made in the image and likeness of God and you are his creation, your body is a temple, right then yeah, that actually would run a foul of the religious concepts being promoted by the parents. And once again, you're not their parents. You're the teacher. They are the parents. They have control over that child. See an A goes on to report that's because in order to establish such a burden, the parents must demonstrate that they or their children were coerced to act or believe in a way that's contrary to their religion. See me reading this book to you telling your kid that everything that you're teaching them is not true. That's not coercion. I'm not coercing them. But also, they can't leave the class, they can't opt out. This is their argument. By the way, let me read this before I lose track of it. Megan mccardal, she is I think she's with the Washington Post. Yes, a columnist at the Washington Post, and she calls this quote puzzling from the ACLUS David Cole, who is defending Montgomery County's refusal to let parents opt their young kids out of reading these books. Here's what the acl you guys said, quote, No one is obligated to send their kids to public school. Wait what really? I kind of feel like that. I kind of feel like that's not true. Right. Don't parents get in trouble. There's a whole thing like truancy about it. If your kid doesn't show up to school, Oh, you can send them to private school, but you can't have any of the tax money with the vouchers to do that. See, we're giving you options here, he says. But if the court rules that religious parents can micro manage the education of their children in public school, even where the effect is to undermine the school's ability to do the job it needs to do for all of its students, they will seriously undermine the ability of public schools to do the. Work they need to do. So again, the answer here seems to me to be stop teaching these books, right, stop using the books? She asks, what job requires every kid to read these books? Unless that job is overriding the religious values of the parents in favor of values selected by the school, That is correct. That's their mission. Their mission is to indoctrinate on these cultural issues, because these are activists in the teaching core. Does the ACLU now believe that enforcing community values on dissenters is the job of public school and that dissenters from those values should leave if they don't like it. I gotta say, if the ACLU and Montgomery County win this battle, they may lose the war because now I don't see any argument against vouchers right. No more. If you win this argument, that no one is obligated to send their kids to public school, then I'd like my tax money back, please, thank you. And I'd like to send my kid to a school that's not teaching them what you're demanding they learn. Because it's not like a parent is saying I don't want my kid to learn to read. They're saying my kid is not learning to read because you're focused on all of this other crap. Schools are Oh, hang on a second, let me back up. Reading about LGBTQ plus Q characters in a book the school's allies say does neither. It doesn't coerce kids or parents to act or believe in any kind of way. But again, as I mentioned earlier, the very setting, the atmosphere of K twelve government schools is coercive by nature. They ring bells to tell you to walk. They punish you if you don't do things or do things. Schools are charged with educating the entire population, and to do that effectively, they can't carve up the curriculum according to each parent's religious beliefs, said Jason walta deputy general counsel at the National Education Association the Teachers' Union, which is also on board with the activism here they filed a brief along with other groups in support of the school district. That is at the very heart of having a pluralistic democracy. See once again, we want a public school model, a government controlled model, with us in charge of it. The position. We set the agenda, we set the curriculum. That's why they don't want vouchers. They don't want your kid to have a choice to go to another school because then they can't control the curriculum. They're trying to raise up the next generation in the revolution. That's the point. And they can dress it up in any other way they want to, with language like you know, making better people, or this or that, whatever, it doesn't matter. You are trying to impose these values into the next generations. And we all know why you would do that. You can do it in the benign form of today's you know word or this month's character trait is trust or truth or something right. Just watch a CMS meeting. They bring these kids down there and they recite their little essay on what the this month's character trait is. What's the point of that. It's it's to indoctor and a certain value set in the kids well, now, you, being a public school, you have to take into account that if the values you are imprinting on the next generation are actually shared by the parents who are sending their kids there. All right, So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and especial days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? 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Mail orders are accepted to get all the details that createavideo dot Com emailspt at the petecalendershow dot com talking about the Supreme Court oral arguments on the dirty books that Montgomery County, Maryland really demand your kids here, some of the school's allies are quoting heavily and perhaps counterintuitively, according to CNN from a high profile decision from the Supreme Court three years ago, which sided with a high school football coach who you may recall, lost his job when he offered prayers on the fifty yard line. He offered prayers on the fifty yard line extracurricular activity, not coerced. Didn't tell people they had to go pray. He just went to go pray. And other kids who wanted, the players, coaches who wanted to pray with him, they all went out there and prayed with him, and he got fired for it. In that case, the Court's six conservatives lined up to reinstate the coach, who became widely known as the praying coach. The twenty twenty two opinion has a lot to say about what counts for religious coercion and what does not. Neil Gorsch had written at the time, quote, learning how to tolerate speech or prayer of all kinds is part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society. Of course, some will take offense to certain forms of speech or prayer they are sure to encounter, But offense does not equate to coercion. See, I would submit there is a difference between a teacher doing it as a class exercise versus a coach after a game who goes out and prays and welcomes anybody to join him. Like, those are different situations. You're not getting cut from the team if you don't go out and pray with the coach, Terry Shilling wrote at The Daily Wire. Shilling is a parental rights advocate and president of the American Principles Project. Terry Shilling wrote parents are the primary educators of their children and that vocation does not stop when kids begin to attend school. The Board of Education added story books that introduce gender ideology and sexuality to children. By the way, this wokeism. It is a religion. It has all the hallmarks of a religion. Okay, so I would submit it is the same as reading the Bible. These storybooks are they were exposing these kids as young as three and four years old. These storybooks are transparently part of an activist push to introduce children to same sex relationships, transgender ideology, and LGBTQ vocabulary at a startlingly young age. Another book in the curriculum, My Rainbow. That's about a transgender identifying boy's desire to have long hair to fit in with the cisgender girls. So a boy wants to grow his hair out so he looks like a girl and fits in with the girls. Jacob's Room to Choose that's about a cross dressing boy whose school accommodates him by abolishing gendered bathrooms. Another one focuses on complex adult topics of sexuality and gender identity. Called Love Violet focuses on a same sex relationship between elementary school classmates. Pride Puppy instructs readers to identify leather under leather underwear, a lip ring, an intersexs flag, and a drag king in its illustrations. These are cartoons, right, designed to familiarize children with the concepts. That's the point. There is no other point. What are your words? That's another book that one encourages kids to change their pronouns. Another one called Intersection allies that one's got a forward by critical race theorist and activists Kimberly Crenshaw. The storybooks are examples of radical propaganda written by progressive activists to shape the hearts and minds of the next generation. I need a quick clarification here. What phase are we in. Are we in the phase of it's not happening, or are we in the phase that it's happening but it's so rare. Or are we in the phase of, Okay, it is happen but here's why that's a good thing. I've lost track what phase we're in on this. I kind of feel like we're bouncing around a little bit. Shilling goes on to say when public schools add storybooks that teach gender ideology as truth, the state has violated the right of parents to raise their children in their religious tradition, along with teaching them the corresponding religious beliefs about gender, human sexuality, and the meaning of marriage. Right, if you're going to tell a four year old that they can be the opposite sex, then you should also tell the kid that most people do not believe that, and that science says you actually cannot be the opposite sex. You should also, like, if you want to talk about gender identity, transgenderism issues, if you want to teach this subject, approach this subject with the students, then you, as an educator, must provide the entire debate. You have to provide them. Dare I say both sides? You have to otherwise that's not education. Well, they get enough of that at home. You don't know that. You don't know that, and you say you don't know that. That's why you have to teach all this stuff. That's your excuse for teaching all this stuff. It's your excuse for keeping all of the transitioning social transitioning secret from the parents. Is because you don't know. This is what you guys say. You don't know if parents at home are going to support it or not. So we're going to do it in the school, so this way we can counteract whatever's happening at home because you don't know. So now you can't say that they're going to get this training at home, they're going to get this other side at home, because you don't know that. All I ask for is a single standard. Right, that's all I'm asking for. All Right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.