Democrats have always fancied themselves as great uniters — and on education and sexual politics, they are. (Just not the way they intended.) Thanks to the Left’s dogged determination to turn the schools into taxpayer-funded incubators for extremism, Americans from every race, religion, and political background have something in common: a ferocious fight for parental rights.

The latest battlefield is the U.S. Supreme Court, where moms and dads are duking it out against a woke Maryland district that insists parents have no claim on their children for the eight hours a day that they’re in the schools’ care. Specifically, Montgomery County believes that it’s their job — not the families’ — to teach them the finer points of radical gender ideology and sexuality, even if parents strenuously object. As you can imagine, that went over like a lead balloon with an enormous swathe of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and other sane but religiously unaffiliated parents.

Over the protests of local families, the school board decided in 2022 to push ahead with its shockingly explicit content for elementary kids that preaches the normalcy of transgenderism, same-sex relationships (even for kids), gender ambiguity, intersex, Pride, and a whole host of offensive books. And, in a move that truly set Montgomery County apart, the district, months later, refused to let parents opt their children out. The decision, apart from being outrageous, was also incredibly perplexing, since the district makes accommodations for families in other subjects.

Even the schools’ own principals openly complained that the curriculum was “not appropriate for the intended age group,” presented extreme gender ideology as “fact,” “sham[ed]” students with different opinions, and was “dismissive of religious beliefs.” The school board refused to listen, turning their meetings into explosive shouting matches that left the parents no recourse but suing.

In one of the most ideologically diverse coalitions ever assembled, the families went to court — arguing that, at the very least, they have the right to pull their children out of those lessons. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represented the group, “shrewdly [making] a Muslim family the lead plaintiffs,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin noted, “putting Montgomery County in the uncomfortable position of conceding that they’ve have to let Muslim parents opt out if the lesson showed kids pictures of Mohammed.”

As Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket told USA Today, “Here you’re basically putting parents in a position where they have to choose between public schools or their religious beliefs. And that choice comes at a high cost. You either have to homeschool your kids or put them in private school or face government fines for not schooling them.” Baxter, who argued the case before the justices last week, added, “That kind of pressure to abandon your belief and practice of protecting your children from these materials at an early age is a pretty obvious First Amendment violation.”

His colleague, Becket’s Colten Stansbury, explained why the case should be such a slam-dunk for the Supreme Court in a sit-down with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” Some of the most shocking pieces of the story, Stansbury pointed out, are how they rehearsed subversive answers to questions that young students might have.

“Not only did the school board introduce these books, but they also gave their teachers specific instruction [on] how to teach the books. And so, if a child says, ‘Hey, boys have to like girls, or girls can’t like girls,’ the teachers are instructed to disrupt their thinking.” The district also started to withhold information from parents about when the books would be read. “And this caused a massive backlash by predominantly religious parents of Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox faith, as well as others.”

As the case worked its way through the lower courts, Montgomery County got even more creative in their reasoning, telling judges that there were too many opt-outs to handle. “That seems a little absurd,” Stansbury said, “given that the school district handles opt-outs in a number of other contexts they’ve had before this case.” Let’s not forget, he reiterated, “Montgomery County is one of the most religiously diverse counties in the country,” so they were used to accommodating families who told them that certain lessons “burdened their beliefs.” “It wasn’t until parents started opting out of these books specifically that they changed course,” Becket’s attorney wanted people to know.

Making matters worse for the woke board, families produced evidence that school officials were openly “derogatory in describing parents” who wanted to exempt their kids from these readings. “They compared the Muslims to xenophobes and white supremacists,” Stansbury shook his head. “So there [were] some pretty blatantly derogatory statements made about these religious parents.” Even in the infamous decision legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015, he underscored, Justice Anthony Kennedy insisted in the majority opinion that “there can be people of good religious faith on the other side of this issue.”

“So, look, if you’re going to recognize a right to same-sex marriage, that also means one day you’re going to have to protect the religious liberty of people [who] disagree with that decision,” as well as militant transgenderism, LBGT extremism, and every other sexual deviance that Obergefell spawned.

Frankly, McLaughlin wrote, “The volume of opt-outs should have told them something — and embedding this in the regular school day was the point. The school board wanted to ensure that kids couldn’t escape.” As Justice Brett Kavanaugh remarked, “I am a bit mystified, as a lifelong resident of the county, how it came to this. … This is the hill we’re gonna die on in terms of not respecting religious liberty?”

What Americans should really be debating is why this content is allowed in our public schools at all. “Let’s not forget that opting out of this kind of curriculum is the barest of minimum guarantees for parents,” FRC’s Meg Kilgannon told The Washington Stand. “Sexual content in schools should be presented only with express written permission of the parent, with the same kinds of permissions schools get for field trips, band class, sports participation, etc. The fact that the educational system assumes this kind of sexual propaganda material is academically useful might be part of the reason test scores are in continued decline. Would ‘inclusive’ resources be prioritized for classroom instruction if the Muslim or Christian parents offered books about their religious faith? Why does sexual information from a left-wing political group rate as academic content in the first place?”

Americans are paying for these schools — they shouldn’t be replaced by them. As Kavanaugh argued, “We’re looking for win-wins.” Co-opting the country’s children for an agenda that voters of all parties reject is anything but.