In the wake of several appalling decisions handed down by the US Supreme Court, I have begun describing the current American political environment as "an executive branch dictatorship with theocratic characteristics." I'm working on an article about the Roberts Court and their enabling of that executive branch dictatorship, so in the meantime let's talk about those "theocratic characteristics" as exemplified by *another* SCOTUS ruling that's an epic disaster for folks who believe in public education and aren't Christian Nationalists. Although it didn't receive nearly as much attention as granting Trump the right to ignore the US Constitution in real time, the reality is that the 6-3 fascist majority also delivered a ruling under the guise of supporting parental religious rights, that will almost certainly act as a de facto ban on teaching LGBTQ material in schools, and is indeed likely to reach much further into our educational system on behalf of people who believe Jesus was white and dinosaurs might be hoax.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/27/supreme-court-lgbt-book-ban-case-ruling

US supreme court rules schools must let kids opt out of LGBTQ+ book readings

"In the ruling, the conservative justice Samuel Alito wrote: “We have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children. And we have held that those rights are violated by government policies that substantially interfere with the religious development of children.”

At the end of Alito’s judgment, the ruling stated: “Until all appellate review in this case is completed, the [school] board should be ordered to notify [parents] in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.”

Folks, I'm just spit-balling here but perhaps we should stop putting legislative and judicial power in the hands of people who believe a man in the sky who curiously shares all their bigoted beliefs is directly speaking to them and telling them to purge queer people from American life? Just a thought.

Snark aside, this is precisely the kind of concern-trolling "parental rights" Trojan Horse the religious right intends to use to dismantle public education and force fascist indoctrination by default, on American children. Faced with a diverse, hand-picked group of religious parents who don't want their children to even know identities other than cis het fascist exist, the Court ruled along entirely partisan lines, that "schools must give children the chance to opt out on faith grounds from listening to storybooks being read out loud that feature gay and transgender characters." Given that in the year 2025 I probably shouldn't have to explain why "treating the knowledge that queer people exist as if it were pornography your children must be protected from is deeply homophobic," let's talk a little bit about why this seemingly narrow decision is likely to have a huge and objectively terrible impact, on American educational life.

The first thing you need to understand is that the American public school system is horrifically underfunded, and as a whole controversy-adverse. In theory, all the SCOTUS judges have ruled here is that schools have to provide advance warning to parents that materials acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people are going to be taught, and allow them to opt their child out of being exposed to objectionable ideas like "queer people are human beings just like you." In practice however, this is just going to be a straight ban on LGBTQ+ material being taught in public schools because the solution of separating out into two classes is expensive and unworkable for educators who are legally obliged to provide supervision and educational programming for the religious opt-out students simultaneously. Nobody has the time, or money, to deal with a problem like that in our current anti-educator political environment and as someone quite familiar with education system bureaucracy, I can assure you that the majority of school boards are simply going to ban anything even remotely related to the existence of LGBTQ+ people.

This is of course a huge win for fash-friendly fundamentalists, but I would caution cis-het people who believe this is purely a queer community issue to consider for a moment, just how many highly-politicized things in American life politically-empowered Christian Nationalists consider "against their religion." After all, if parents can opt their kids out of even knowing LGBTQ+ people exist because "God," what's to stop them from demanding an opt-out to avoid their kids learning about evolution, women's suffrage, or say the dark history of American chattel slavery? And why would broke and terrified schoolboards have any more money to provide two separate classes during those lessons?

Buckle up folks; this ride is about to get even bumpier than it already is.