By Peter J. Smith
LEXINGTON, Massachusetts, June 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Massachusetts parents objecting to a public school’s indoctrination of their children in homosexuality without their knowledge or consent may have their day in court, if the US Supreme Court grants a petition to allow their civil rights lawsuit to proceed.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, David and Tonia Parker, and Joseph Robert and Robin Wirthlin, formally requested the US Supreme Court to review the January ruling by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in filing a petition for writ of certiorari (No. 07-1368).
The petition asks the Supreme Court to reverse the lower federal court’s ruling and allow the parents’ civil rights lawsuit to go to trial against Lexington school district officials, whom the Parkers and Wirthlins say are violating their constitutional right not to have their children influenced in ways that violate their deeply held religious beliefs.
The Parkers and Wirthlins have been attempting to bring a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Lexington school district and its officials for deliberately teaching their children as young as kindergarten about homosexual and transgender issues despite the fact that they had made repeated requests that their children be absent from those classes.
The 1st Circuit Court agreed with District Judge Wolf’s decision to uphold the Lexington policy that denies parents’ rights over their children once they enter the domain of the classroom. The court agreed that parents neither had to be informed nor consent to classes imbuing their children with favorable impressions of homosexual relationships, while admitting candidly that was the very purpose of those classes.
“It is a fair inference that the reading of King and King was precisely intended to influence the listening children toward tolerance of gay marriage,” the federal court stated. “That was the point of why that book was chosen and used.”
The book “King and King,” depicts a “prince” who isn’t searching for a princess to be his queen, but instead decides the princesses’ brother would make a better queen. The book portrays their “love” in a sympathetic manner, and in the end the two “marry” each other. Unlike the Medieval fairy tale, this fairy tale shows the king and his male “queen” kissing on the lips at the end of the book, and was read to second graders in 2006 at Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts. (see excerpt: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/issues/king_and_king/book.html)
The court then continued, “There is no evidence of systemic indoctrination. There is no allegation that Joey [the Wirthlins’ son] was asked to affirm gay marriage. Requiring a student to read a particular book is generally not coercive of free exercise rights.”
Homosexual advocacy groups have been granted a deadline of July 2 to submit legal briefs opposing the petition.
The Parkers’ battle for their rights as the primary educators and moral educators of their children has had a dramatic history. David Parker was arrested and charged for trespassing by school officials after he refused to leave a parent-teacher meeting without a guarantee school officials would notify him when homosexuality and transgenderism were to be discussed in front of his then six-year-old boy (https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05042910.html). The charges were later dropped.
In 2006 Parker’s son was the object of a vicious schoolyard attack over his father’s battle against the school’s homosexual activism (https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06061410.html).
Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Court Rules Schools Can Teach Homosexuality Without Parents Consent or Choice to Opt Out
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07022604.html
National Gay Groups Fight Parents Over Mandatory Homosexual Indoctrination in Mass. Schools
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/oct/06100606.html
Seven-Year-Old Beaten at School For Father’s Stand Against Homosexual Activism
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06061410.html
Parents Sue Massachusetts School for Promoting Homosexuality to Young Children
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/apr/06042802.html
Father of 6-Year-Old Arrested Over Objection to Homosexual Curriculum in Kindergarten Class
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05042910.html
Charges Dropped Against Father Who Objected to Promotion of Homosexuality in School
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/oct/05102106.html
Massachusetts Superintendent Instructs Schools: Parents Do Not Have to be Informed About “Diversity” Classes
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05092602.html