By Parth Joshi
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down several major decisions, ranging from Medicaid’s provider of choice provision to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s authority. Among these was Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case where the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland approved LGBTQ+-inclusive books for its English Language Arts curriculum. A few members of different religious groups sued the district for not providing them with opt-out options so they could take their kids out of the classroom whenever such books were being read or discussed. They argued that not providing an opt-out violated their religious right to decide how, when and where their kids should be exposed to themes of sexuality, gender identity and queerness at large.
Unfortunately – and despite the advocacy of groups like Americans United – the Supreme Court sided with these parents and denied kids in Montgomery County and across the nation unalienable access to queer-inclusive stories. This court case, in line with the high court’s never-wavering dedication to Christian Nationalism, will devastate children’s access to queer narratives for years to come.
When I was younger, I never heard queer stories in school. With my only role models being heterosexual, cisgender people, I felt like queerness was an extraterrestrial concept. If you grow up only hearing about a certain kind of people and relationship, when any thought of yours differs from that, it feels impossible. I felt like a statistical anomaly for not understanding my feelings.
The way I learned about queerness was by being bullied for it. In the fourth grade, I was deemed “gay” by another classmate for using the swings with my female friends. While I had never heard the word before, I knew by the way he used it and my friends’ reactions that it was not a compliment. I went home and plunged myself into a ferocity of Googling, trying to figure out who I was and why I was not “normal.”
Kids need queer representation, especially when they are young. It exposes them to the differences among people without attaching a good or bad connotation to them. As a young queer child, having an inclusive curriculum would have eased my mind about who I was and helped me unabashedly burgeon into my identity. More than helping just young LGBTQ+ folks, it makes queerness not something to tease someone about. If kids know that being queer is normal, then they will be less emboldened to harass their peers about their identity.
This Supreme Court decision not only betrays our Constitution’s inherent principles, it betrays queer kids across the country by perpetuating their bullying.
Parth Joshi is a member of Americans United’s Youth Organizing Fellowship.
