AMANDA MARCOTTE , Salon; Progressive parents in Oklahoma offer blueprint to mess with MAGA censorship
"Alito, who is as intellectually dishonest as he is self-pitying, tried to pretend the decision was a “compromise.” He repeatedly misrepresented the content of the books with hysterical language. As legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern explained at Slate, Alito “reframes these utterly innocent children’s books as insidious propaganda designed to brainwash children.” The goal here is not only to reinscribe blatant homophobia into the law, but also to minimize the impact of the decision by implying it only impacts “gay” books. But it’s far broader than that, as Vox legal journalist Ian Millhiser notes. The ruling empowers “parents who object to any form of classroom instruction on religious grounds” to demand opt-out rights — or the school to censor the material entirely. Stern continues:
The problem with this request is that schools cannot possibly know, in advance, which religious views are held by which parents, and which books or lessons those parents might find objectionable. In the past, parents have sued school districts objecting, on religious grounds, to lessons that touch on topics as diverse as divorce, interfaith couples and “immodest dress.” They’ve objected to books which expose readers to evolution, pacifism, magic, women achieving things outside of the home and “false views of death.”"
