Hundreds of parents are demanding that Maryland’s largest school district allow them to opt out of classes and books that discuss topics like sexuality and gender.
Parents of different religious faiths, including Christians and Muslims, rallied outside the headquarters of the Montgomery County Public Schools Tuesday to show their solidarity and stand up to the district's controversial LGBTQ curriculum.
Deseret News contributing writer Bethany Mandel, also a mother, argued it's a parent's right to tackle controversial topics, including sexuality and gender ideology, with their children on their own terms on "Fox & Friends First."
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"Some of the books were first, second, third-grade read-aloud books about transgender ideology, about sexuality," Mandel told Carley Shimkus. "Some of the parents who spoke in favor of banning the opt-out said… 'I'm gay, and a book didn't make me gay and... There's no way that your child, if you shield them in this manner, can sort of operate in the outside world,' and that's not what anyone is asserting."
"No one thinks that our kids can turn gay by reading a book. What we're asserting is that children are best learning about these sort of tricky, sticky subjects from their parents, and their parents should have a right to determine how their kids are first introduced to this," she continued.
MCPS, which is the wealthiest district in Maryland, announced last year efforts to include an LGBTQ-inclusive reading list as part of its English language arts curriculum.
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But when some parents tried to "opt" their children out of these course materials, the district pushed back.
An MCPS policy stated that students and families "may not choose to opt out of engaging with any instructional materials, other than ‘Family Life and Human Sexuality Unit of Instruction’ which is specifically permitted by Maryland law. As such, teachers will not send home letters to inform families when inclusive books are read in the future."
As a result, parents in the community have banded together to advocate for more influence in their kids' curriculum.
MCPS parent Dawn Iannaco-Hahn said she wanted to attend a school board meeting addressing the matter, but said the event was invite-only.
Allegations that the school board held the meeting with only a certain group of people could indicate it violated the Open Meetings Act, which requires "many State and local public bodies to hold their meetings in public, to give the public adequate notice of those meetings, and to allow the public to inspect meetings minutes," the attorney general's website reads.
"MCPS sent out… a community-wide text message that said, for safety reasons… unless you were on an invite list, or you had previously been approved to testify that they weren't going to be letting people in," she said. "And… reminder that you can tune in online… [but] not everybody has Internet access."
"So in a county that preaches about equity, there's not a whole lot of equity in that situation," she continued. "Plus, I'm a person that doesn't do well with [virtually] anything. I like to be there. I like to be in person, and I like to be a part of it, but I wasn't able to attend."
Many parents took to the podium to express their angst surrounding the controversial topics their elementary school students would be exposed to during that meeting.
"Introducing sexual behavior and preference at an early age raises legitimate concern for us parents," one parent said.
"Where's the respect or does inclusion and respect only apply to a specific group?" another parent questioned.
"For us, this is genuinely an issue of faith, not hate. Our faith is not partisan, and our people are not backwards," another parent said.
Mandel attended the rally on Tuesday, noting the issue at hand has spanned cultural and demographic lines.
She said there were plenty of minority parents in attendance alongside Muslim and Christian families to show their support.
"What was really incredible was I was in the minority as far as ethnicity there. It was largely Black and Brown, a lot of Christians," Mandel said. "What was really inspiring was there was also a number of Muslim families there on a fast day. They had been fasting all day long in the Washington, D.C., heat, in the pouring rain, the skies opened up in the middle of the rally."
"It started with about a thousand people and there were… hundreds of people when I got there after the storm let up. It was really incredible," she continued. "They were all sort of there on message, and as one of the speakers said, it wasn't partisan. It was just truly like, we want a right to say what our kids are learning."
MCPS did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment.
Fox News' Bradford Betz and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
