(RNS) — Montgomery County, Maryland, north of Washington, is a Democratic stronghold, having gone for Vice President Kamala Harris by 53 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election. But some religious parents in the county are holding out hope that President-elect Donald Trump, and his opposition to what he has labeled the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bureaucracy,” will save their public school system.
“One of the main responsibilities of the president is to uphold constitutional rights for regular citizens of the United States,” said Wael Elkoshairi, a Muslim parent who unenrolled his daughter from her Montgomery County public school this year. “We’re not interested in personality politics. We’re really interested in people who can defend our rights to raise our children the way we want.”
With a large number of first- and second-generation immigrants residing in this community of just over a million people, Montgomery County residents have been locked in a contentious debate on how gender and sexuality should be taught in public schools, with many religious parents swinging right, standing against curriculum changes that introduce LGBTQ subject matter to elementary age students.
Under a 2022 policy change, “Diverse and Inclusive Instructional Materials” became a mandatory part of Montgomery County Public Schools’ K-8 curriculum. Previously, parents were allowed to opt out of the material on behalf of their children.
People demonstrate outside the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education, July 23, 2023, in Rockville, Md. (RNS photo/Reina Coulibaly)
Elkoshairi, a leader in the movement to restore the right to opt out, said the point is not to deprive those parents who want their children to be taught the inclusive materials, which include lessons on “the aspirations, issues, and achievements of women, persons with disabilities, persons from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, as well as persons of diverse gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation,” according to the board of education’s policy.
“We’re not talking about changing the curriculum. We’re saying … we want this small accommodation for the religious minority who need it,” Elkoshairi explained. “They said no, we will make your child sit through it and have discussions about homosexual relationships. It’s just unreasonable.”
Some view accommodations such as “opt-out” policies as a right based on the U.S. Constitution’s freedom of religion clause. Supporters of the Diverse and Inclusive Instructional Materials see such accommodations as a form of “soft censorship,” in the words of Pen America, an organization that supports freedom of expression.
Over the past two years, an interfaith network of concerned parents spanning languages, generations and classes has coalesced in person and on social media sites including Viber, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
Five couples in this network have taken the MCPS Board of Education to court with the help of Becket Law, a religious freedom law firm. The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, is destined for the Supreme Court in the new year.
“The issues we’re talking about are protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and so regardless of which party is in power, we would hope that they would respect parental rights to opt their children out of instruction that violates their religious beliefs,” said Eric Baxter, lead counsel on the case and a longtime resident of Montgomery County.
“As I’ve talked to people around my own community, even in Montgomery County, where there is a pretty strong bias towards the Democratic Party,” Baxter added, “I found that uniformly, my neighbors — regardless of their political persuasion — are very sympathetic to these concerns.”
Eric Baxter, of Becket Law, speaks during a news conference about the Mahmoud v. Taylor case in Rockville, Md., Aug. 9, 2023. (RNS photo/Reina Coulibaly)
Earlier this year, a Pew Research Institute report on race and LGBTQ issues in K-12 education found teachers split evenly on whether students should be learning about gender identity in school. Nationwide, it found that the respondents’ stance correlated closely with political affiliation or inclination, with Democratic teachers more likely than Republican teachers to say students should learn that someone’s gender can be different from their sex at birth. “Most Republican teachers (69%) say students should not learn about this topic in school at all,” said Pew.
But the “restore the opt-out” parents in Montgomery County say that politics have no place in the classroom. Instead, they cite their faith as the driver of their opinion on gender education.
“Honestly, I don’t think much of Trump, but I was terrified with the idea of Kamala being the president, or any Democrat being a president,” says Kirubel Fresenbet, an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian and father of three who also unenrolled his grade-school children from the public schools because of the policy.
“I was seriously considering moving out of the country because I don’t feel the Democratic Party considers me to be a human being,” Fresenbet said. “The way the Democratic Party is going, it’s like ‘Hey, you produce children, you give them to us, and then we decide what they learn.’”
Kirubel Fresenbet addresses the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education. (Video screen grab)
The five couples suing the county schools include Muslim, Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox residents. Their defense has drawn supporting letters, known as amicus briefs, from religious scholars, institutions and individuals, including Seventh-day Adventists, Jews, evangelical Christians and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Muslim “opt-out” supporters say they are aware that Trump’s record of policies restricting immigration, especially strictures known popularly as the “Muslim ban,” stand to upend the lives of many Montgomery County residents.
But Elkoshairi doesn’t see it as a zero-sum game. “It’s a trade-off,” he said. “Make it harder for me to work, make it harder for my family to get into the country. But for God’s sake, don’t destroy our school system.”
Said Fresenbet, “Democracy, xenophobia, racism all go out of the window because now I’m being labeled less human.”
This article was produced as part of the RNS/Interfaith America Religion Journalism Fellowship.
