Prince & Knight & the Supreme Smite

A Cautionary Tale in Judicial Fairyland

Once upon a time in the United States of Amnesia, a band of robed traditionalists gathered under the marble dome to deliver a heroic blow to… storybooks.

That’s right. Not zoning laws, not corporate monopolies, not the creeping erosion of voting rights—no, the real danger lurking in America’s heartland was Uncle Bobby’s Wedding. Apparently, what threatens the Republic most is a kid learning that two penguins—or worse, two knights—might fall in love.

In a dazzling display of religio-legal jujitsu, the Supreme Court ruled that parents can now opt their children out of public school lessons that feature LGBTQ characters, on religious grounds. Forget the melting polar ice caps and the melting minds of anti-vaxxers—the emergency is that a second grader might accidentally learn the word “nonbinary” before their Confirmation class.

This decision is a masterstroke of anti-progress disguised as liberty. The justices have, in essence, rebranded parental discomfort as a constitutional emergency. They've turned “I don’t want my child exposed to gay people” into a protected religious exercise. Suddenly, “exposure to ideas” is oppression, and discomfort is now the new discrimination.

Let’s be clear: these books are not instructing children to stage a drag revue in homeroom. They’re teaching empathy, inclusion, and the rather benign fact that some people are different and that’s okay. But apparently, to six of our nation’s finest legal minds, reading about other humans is an existential threat to faith.

So what are the implications?

Teachers will now need a permissions slip for every story not starring a cisgender farmer and his obedient wife.

Districts will need a Parental Alert System every time a book mentions rainbows without a Noah.

And perhaps soon, opt-out forms for science, history, and critical thinking, too, since all of those might offend someone’s version of Genesis.

The problem isn’t just the ruling—it’s the judicial endorsement of ignorance as a civil right. Education is not supposed to reflect your worldview like a safe little mirror; it’s supposed to crack that mirror, challenge you, and maybe even cause a moment of growth. But with this ruling, the Court has declared that students have a right to avoid discomfort, as long as that discomfort is framed in church pews.

Let’s not forget the truly wild part: the Court didn’t even decide the case—they just sent it back and all but winked, telling lower courts to treat religious discomfort with the reverence typically reserved for nuclear treaties.

So here's the punchline: in an era when “freedom” is often code for freedom from reality, this decision boldly says that religious belief trumps civic literacy, that parental rights override student rights, and that fairy tales can be banned—if they have too much fabulous.

America, where you can open-carry an AR-15 into a library, but God forbid you let a child check out And Tango Makes Three.

Stay tuned for next term’s ruling: Jesus v. Clifford the Big Red Dog, in which the justices will determine whether a book about a giant pet violates the Book of Leviticus.

Until then, progressives may want to hold a candlelight vigil… preferably not near a public school.