Supreme Court justice just accidentally 'revealed his own homophobia': analyst
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leapt into proselytizing from the bench on Wednesday — and in doing so, he "revealed his own homophobia" as well as that he didn't understand the basic plot of the children's book he wants to allow parents to force schools to embargo, court watcher Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate in an analysis published on Wednesday.
The case in question was Mahmoud v. Taylor, a potential landmark decision about the right of parents to censor LGBTQ content from school curricula.
"In 2022, Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education chose to include it on the curriculum for young students, prompting some religious parents to 'opt out' their children from seeing the books," wrote Stern. "The board eventually scrapped its opt-out policy, finding that it had become unworkable: So many parents were objecting that the policy gave them a veto power over the curricula, with educators scrapping materials rather than managing the logistics of endless opt-outs. The parents then sued, alleging that the board violated their First Amendment right to free exercise by denying them the chance to shield their children from LGBTQ+ literature."
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During the arguments, Alito took particular aim at "Uncle Bobby's Wedding," a 2008 picture book about a child reacting to her uncle's same-sex wedding.
But in the process, Alito revealed he didn't even understand the central conflict of the book, Stern wrote.
“I’ve read that book,” Alito proclaimed, with what Stern called the bravado of "a homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner preparing to lecture his family about something he saw on Fox News." “I don’t think anybody can read that and say, well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men, that Uncle Bobby gets married to his boyfriend, Jamie. And everybody’s happy and … everyone accepts this — except for the little girl, Chloe, who has reservations about it. But her mother corrects her: ‘No, you shouldn’t have any reservations about this.’ As I said, it has a clear moral message.”
At this point, Stern noted, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was forced to step in and correct him, saying, "Wait a minute, the reservation is about..." only for Alito to talk over her.
"Sotomayor felt it was urgently important to address Alito’s claim — and rightly so, because he was wrong," wrote Stern. "Alito claimed that Chloe had moral 'reservations' about Uncle Bobby marrying his boyfriend — as if her 'reservations' were about a man marrying another man. But the book makes it abundantly clear that Chloe’s reservations are not about Uncle Bobby’s sexual orientation. Rather, she frets that he won’t have as much time to spend with her."
Alito's "butchering" of the message of a children's book, concluded Stern, "cuts to the rotten core of Mahmoud itself."
"The plaintiffs frame these books as propaganda designed to brainwash their children into supporting LGBTQ+ rights. But all that books like Uncle Bobby’s Wedding actually do is depict LGBTQ+ families as they exist in the real world. Is it propaganda to see two moms with their child at the grocery store? To see a transgender dad with his son on the playground? Are parents’ religious beliefs really offended when their child is exposed to different kind of families?"