Today, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that parents can opt their children out of public school classes if the curriculum conflicts with their religious beliefs. Specifically, they targeted books featuring LGBTQ+ characters in classrooms.
As the daughter of an English teacher, I can’t help but ask—where do we draw that line?
For instance, entire blogs rate Shakespeare’s characters by “gayness.” Academic debates have long surrounded the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in The Iliad. Therefore, are we banning Homer now? Is Shakespeare too “controversial” to teach? This seems relatively objective for an educational ruling. Who gets to decide what is and isn’t “gay”? How many queer-coded characters get quietly erased in the process?
Let’s be honest: this isn’t about protecting children—it’s about controlling narratives. Why is it only now a problem when Christianity feels challenged? What about every other religion that’s had to tolerate curriculum clashes for decades?
We’ve already seen what happens when censorship wins—libraries gutted, book bans spreading, teachers walking on eggshells. Learning means expanding your worldview, not living in an echo chamber of the same thoughts and ideas. If we don’t learn as a society, how can we ever expect to grow?
While homophobes debate over what’s gay and what is not (the irony), I am going to double down.
📚 Want to help me get more queer books into more hands?
Let’s organize. Email me at [email protected], and let’s start building a reading list, a book drive, a banned book brigade, and little gay libraries—whatever it takes. Invite your friends. Pull your community in. Let’s make sure every kid who needs these stories can access them.
Because if they’re going to try to erase us from the curriculum, we’ll just write ourselves back in.
P.S. Can all the atheists in Texas opt their kids out now that schools are required to post the Ten Commandments? Asking for a secular friend.
Read a scholarly analysis of Achilles and Patroclus
Read NPR’s coverage of the SCOTUS opt-out decision
By Jenn Bell, Vice Chair of the LGBTQIA+ Council for Kentucky Democrats