LGBT curriculum in schools is becoming more prevalent, and some schools are even removing the ability to opt out. Parents are pushing back.

From WORLD. The Mahmoud-Barakat, Roman, and Persak families of Montgomery County, Md., may not appear to have a lot in common. Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat are Muslim with high school–age children. Chris and Melissa Persak, whose daughters are in elementary school, are Roman Catholic. Jeff Roman is also Catholic. His wife, Svitlana, is Ukrainian Orthodox, and their only son is in second grade.

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But when the Montgomery County school district introduced pro-LGBT children’s books into its curriculum last year, all three families decided the content of the books didn’t line up with their religious beliefs about sexuality and marriage. Since the state of Maryland and the Montgomery County district both allow students to opt out of instruction related to family life and human sexuality, the parents declined to have their children in class for the readings. But in March, the school board announced that teachers would no longer offer notice about the LGBT material and students could not opt out, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the board last week.

“It’s a deeply American principle that parents have the right to direct their children’s religious upbringing, to direct their children’s education, especially on sensitive issues like a child’s own identity. … The job of schools is to support the parents in that effort, not cut them out of the process,” William Haun, senior counsel with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told WORLD. The Becket Fund filed the lawsuit on behalf of the families. …

In Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, a mom defends her young daughter’s insistence that she is a boy, telling another child that “not everything needs to make sense.” The book says that children, not parents or other adults, are the best teachers about their gender identity. …

“It’s a ‘child knows best’ view of human sexuality,” Haun said. “And that leads to the kind of life-altering decisions that the Montgomery County Public Schools as a function of this curriculum are cutting the parents out of.”

The introduction of the books into the curriculum raised concern among hundreds of parents in the nearly 160,000-student system, according to the lawsuit. …

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(Excerpt from WORLD. Photo Credit: John Moore/Getty Images)