patrick.net

An old-west style showdown is ambling down Minnesota’s legal sidewalks. The Sahan Journal ran an article yesterday headlined, “St. Louis Park parents threaten legal action over LGBTQ books.” Corporate media has a blackout on the story. Maybe the blackout is because St. Louis Park Somali muslim parents are threatening legal action.




St. Louis Park’s devout Somali muslim community is a ‘vibrant and growing part’ of the city's population. Earlier this year, national media celebrated that Nadia Mohamed became America’s first Somali-American mayor. I doubt they’re celebrating now.

St. Louis Park’s muslims mainly hew to Islamic teaching that homosexuality is immoral, and they don’t like it much when woke schools give their young children books graphically depicting homosexual acts. So far, this story sounds a lot like other similar ‘book banning’ stories over the last couple years, like Moms for Liberty’s famous/infamous efforts to limit atypical sexualized content in public schools.

But the Somali parents are taking the argument all the way to its logical endpoint, setting up a vast, unpredictable battle. It is an argument that Christian parents have, for whatever reason, so far avoided making, possibly because of the implications if an eventual Supreme Court decision went the wrong way.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Years ago, St. Louis Park elected several gay school board members. Since then, the district libraries have swollen with material that most parent consider gross if not outright revolting. Gay parents argue that every grocery magazine cover glorifies heterosexual content, and nobody complains about that, so giving school kids cartoons showing little boys performing oral sex on each other is only fair.

“Love is love,” they claim.

(For the record, that is a demonic lie. Sex is not love, and love is not sex. Just ask the entrepreneurial, fifth-wave feminists on OnlyFans. But I digress.)

So six Somali families hired The First Liberty Institute, a conservative, Texas–based law firm that has litigated several high-profile First Amendment cases, like defending a high school football coach fired for praying on the field after games, a cake shop owner who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding, a Muslim inmate denied a religious meal, and a Jewish family trying to place a religious symbol on their relative’s grave in a government-owned cemetery.

So far, First Liberty’s lawyers have only sent the school district a demand letter, but the remarkable part of the story is the legal theory they’re arguing.

A 1993 Minnesota law requires school districts to provide a “parental curriculum review” process. Under the law, districts must allow parents to review instructional materials and, if parents object, schools must “make reasonable arrangements with school personnel for alternative instruction.”

That language could not possibly be more clear.

The Somali parents want the school district to follow the law. They want some reasonable arrangements for their children to receive alternative instruction, instead of cartoon manuals instructing kids how to have gay sex. They just wanted to opt-out:

“It is disheartening that these books were introduced to our children without our knowledge or consent, leaving us with no recourse to opt out,” (a woman named Ilhan told the St. Louis Park school board). “Our request is simply to be informed in advance when materials related to sexuality and LGBTQ identity are included in the curriculum, along with the option to exempt our children from those specific lessons.”

But school board members, advised by compliant staff lawyers, argued that the Minnesota Supreme Court has never interpreted the plain language of the curriculum statute in light of more recent Minnesota laws, like its Human Rights Act, which — to them — seem to conflict with each other, because the HRA bars discrimination against gay students.

In the school board’s view, allowing muslim students to opt-out of gay material might hurt some gay students’ feelings, which would would be catastrophic, thereby unconscionably discriminating against gay folks writ large. Just like Nazis. (Except for Ukrainian Nazis, those are the good ones.)

This is where the stakes in the conflict got turned up to Spinal Tap’s famous Number-11 setting. The Somali muslim parents carefully and respectfully invoked their Constitutional religious liberty. As Ilhan explained, handily wielding the awkward woke vocabulary:

“We wholeheartedly respect the importance of affirming LGBTQ identities, but we are troubled by the way these books have been presented to our children,” Ilhan said. “The manner in which they have been taught appears to exceed the boundaries of affirmation, urging every child to delve into their own understanding of gender and sexuality. This approach, we believe, directly conflicts with our deeply held religious beliefs.”

The reason this argument is so very stakes-raising is that, by invoking the U.S. Constitution, they bypassed all the potential arguments over any conflicts between parents’ rights under Minnesota’s curriculum statutes and the state’s Human Rights Amendment preventing gay students from potentially getting their feelings hurt.

Unless this gets resolved soon, out of court, the dispute tees up the final conflict — over school textbooks — between the rights of religious parents under the First Amendment and the rights of gay secular parents under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. After 9/11, democrats adopted muslims into the party’s Neo-marxist coalition of victim groups. So black Somali muslims currently wear suits of political armor (that Christian parents lack) and the case can proceed on the merits, without all the usual character assassination and bad-motive-imputation.

Much can be learned from these Somali parents’ strategies. I’d put this story squarely into the ‘counter-revolution’ category. Will the Supreme Court find that muslim parents’ deeply-held religious convictions trump the potential for gay students to get hurt feelings when other kids aren’t required to read LGBTQ+ material in public schools?

The New York Charter School Center just examined the latest assessments of third- to eighth-grade students and found charter schools outperformed their traditional public-school counterparts — especially in educating minority kids.

Students who attended city charter schools scored 7 percentage points higher on the English language arts exam, with 59% passing versus 52% in city Department of Education-run schools, and 13 percentage points higher on the math exam, with 63% passing versus 50%.

Black charter-school students outperformed their district counterparts by 19 percentage points in English and 27 percentage points in math.

Similarly, Hispanic charter-school kids beat their public-school peers by 16 percentage points in English and 25 percentage points in math.

The New York Charter School Center just examined the latest assessments of third- to eighth-grade students and found charter schools outperformed their traditional public-school counterparts — especially in educating minority kids.

A couple from Michigan is suing their child’s former school district after discovering that officials had secretly “transitioned” their daughter without their knowledge or consent.

Dan and Jennifer Mead allege that the Rockford Public School District was urging their daughter to lead a secret double life behind their backs.

The Meads say their daughter was treated as a male student while at school with the help of teachers and district officials.

The parents discovered that district employees had been treating the couple’s middle-school daughter as a boy, actively taking steps to conceal these actions from them, they allege in the lawsuit.

The Meads allege employees in the district tried to cover up their actions by altering their daughter’s official records to remove references to “gender transitions” before sending the records home.

Listen to this "gay teacher" brag about how he's been asked to "tone it down" by administration and how he teaches kids to "sissy that walk"

Yeah, I don't think I'd want my young child anywhere near this dude either. So to the people who pulled their kids from his class, (applause gif)

Notice how admin simply told the guy to "tone it down." If you fire the guy, you're in trouble. If you keep him, he just ignores you and does what he wants all the time.

There's no way out of this if you're the school.

Courageous Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice might have just ended the argument over removing sexualized books from schools. And she did it in the most unlikely possible place. How courageous is Tiffany? Yesterday, in a political environment where saying one thing slightly wrong can end your career, Tiffany bravely ventured deep into hostile territory on MSNBC with Joy Reid to answer questions about so-called “book banning:”

When Reid began to loudly press her to justify what Reid called modern-day “book banning,” Tiffany interrupted the liberal anchorlady and explained that nobody is banning books:

“No one’s banning books. Write the book, print the book, publish the book, put the book in the public library, sell the book. We’re talking about a public school library. Children don’t have unfettered access to the internet at school … Why is no one out there protesting to free the internet in schools?”
What an excellent question. How is limiting kids’ access to adult material in school books any different from limiting their access to adult material on the Internet? That question is what I call a mind worm — once you’ve thunk it, it never completely goes away — and in a sane world it should end the debate.

It's just a way for this teacher to talk to underage kids about sex.

(Minnesota) St. Louis Park public schools will now let parents decide whether their children should be subjected to curriculum that is LGBTQ-affirming.

This change comes after two public interest law firms, True North Legal and First Liberty Institute, sent letters to the school district saying the district’s previous denials of opt-out requests violated the First Amendment and state law.

In 2023, six Muslim families requested that St. Louis Park public schools provide notice before LGBTQ-affirming books were discussed in class. These families, who emigrated from Somalia over the last two decades, also requested the ability to opt out their children from participating in the curriculum.

According to previous press statements from the two law firms, third- and fourth-grade children who were members of the six families were exposed to LBGTQ content in October 2023. These LGBTQ-centric readings were also allegedly accompanied with the teacher’s commentary on LGBTQ identity. This situation caused “significant confusion and distress” amongst the six families.

After the intervention by True North Legal and First Liberty Institute, elementary schools and St. Louis Park High School have now begun granting opt-out requests, per a press release from the two law firms.

“True North Legal exists to protect the religious freedom of Minnesota families,” said Renee Carlson, general counsel of True North Legal. “We’re proud to have worked with these families and the St. Louis Park school district to ensure that their constitutional rights are protected. Ensuring the religious freedom of students and their families is paramount, and infringing upon that right is unacceptable.”