The Supreme Court Opens the Door to Erasing Gays

Among its final ruling of its ending term, The U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to further erasing of LGBT themes in public schools.  On the flip side, in a case brought by Christofascist business owners the Court upheld a requirement that insurance companies  must continue covering preventive services  including HIV prevention medication, cancer screenings, and vaccines. The Advocate looks at the ruling:

At issue was whether insurers could be compelled to cover services such as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents HIV transmission. Public health experts say PrEP access is especially vital for Black and Latine gay and bisexual men and transgender women, who are disproportionately impacted by HIV.

Other services potentially on the chopping block included screenings for cancer, depression, hepatitis B and C, and sexually transmitted infections, as well as a range of vaccines and counseling interventions.

The plaintiffs, a group of Christian business owners, argued that being required to cover PrEP violated their religious beliefs, claiming the medication “encourages homosexual behavior.” A lower court had previously sided with them, sparking concern that the ruling could jeopardize nationwide access to dozens of preventive health services.

Medical experts and LGBTQ+ advocates emphasized that PrEP is used by people of all backgrounds and sexual orientations, and that HIV “does not discriminate.”

Friday’s decision, on the last day of the Supreme Court's term, marks a significant win for LGBTQ+ health equity and for public health more broadly, following years of legal attempts to undermine the ACA’s nondiscrimination and preventive care mandates.

Obviously, this is a most welcomed ruling since the plaintiff business true desire in my personal view,  is to simply have LGBT individuals contract HIV and ultimately die.  There is literally nothing "Christian" about these people other than the Christian label they have misappropriated. 

On a much more ominous front, the same day the Court handed down the ruling on PrEP, it sided with anti-LGBT parents who objected to LGBT themed books and materials. The majority opinion authored by Samuel Alito - who seemingly was an inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition in a former life - once again allows parental religious beliefs no matter how backward and bigoted to override the decisions of public school administrators and curriculum specialists.   Meanwhile, it ignores the reality that the most dangerous children and youths remains churches and church youth groups where sexual abuse by pastors and youth pastors  remains rampant.  A blistering dissent described in The Advocate authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor lays out the dangers posed by this ruling:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor has warned that Friday's Supreme Court ruling allowing parents in Maryland to opt their children out of lessons with LGBTQ+ books "threatens the very essence of public education."

The Court ruled 6-3 in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor that not allowing opt-outs violates the parents' freedom of religion, with Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. Sotomayor sharply criticized the decision in her opinion, stating that it "constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators."

"[Public schools] offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society. That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality," Sotomayor wrote. "Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs."

Parents from various religious faiths — Muslim, Roman Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, and others — sued Montgomery County Public Schools in 2023 after the district ended its policy allowing them to opt-out of lessons they objected to, including LGBTQ+ picture books. The district argued that allowing parents to opt their children out created concerns about absenteeism and social stigma against LGBTQ+ students and their families, while also putting them at risk of violating anti-discrimination laws.

The district also argued that students simply having access to information does not violate their parents' religious freedom, which Sotomayor concurred with in her dissent.

"Casting aside longstanding precedent, the Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to 'subtle' themes 'contrary to the religious principles' that parents wish to instill in their children," she continued. "Exposing students to the 'message' that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny."

Sotomayor also agreed with the district's argument that allowing opt outs for any lessons deemed controversial could affect any topic, resulting in "chaos for this Nation’s public schools." Requiring schools to provide advance notice and opt outs for every subject that might conflict with a parent’s religious beliefs "will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools," she said.

"That decision guts our free exercise precedent and strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society," Sotomayor wrote. "Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, until now. The reverberations of the Court’s error will be felt, I fear, for generations. Unable to condone that grave misjudgment, I dissent."