The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to rule for parents in Maryland who objected on religious grounds to books made available in a school district's elementary schools that feature stories about gay and transgender characters.

Members of the 6-3 conservative majority, which often backs religious rights, seemed sympathetic during the lively 2½-hour oral argument toward the parents’ claims that the Montgomery County Board of Education violated their religious rights by failing to provide an opt-out for their children.

If you were looking for the book “Sister Outsider” a few years ago at a school in Tennessee, you might not have found it there. But thanks to California Sen. Laphonza Butler, parts of it now live in the Congressional Record.

“Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a Black woman, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing work — who has come to ask you, are you doing yours?” Butler said on the Senate floor in February, quoting Audre Lorde.

As a queer and out youth, Shae Ross was alarmed when she heard that conservative groups were organizing in her community to ban books dealing with sexuality, gender and race. So she and her friends got organized themselves, and helped persuade their school board to make it much harder to remove books and other materials from their libraries and classrooms.

In a letter to the board of PEN America, a group of current and former employees this week threw their support behind a recent, high-profile protest against the literary free speech organization’s refusal to align with its parent organization PEN International and call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Claim: A school in Florida has "banned" the poem read by Amanda Gorman at President Joe Biden's inauguration.

Who said it: The Associated Press, Politico, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Axios, MSNBC, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Boston Globe, the New Republic, Sky News, People, Variety, Jezebel, and others.

In an interview this week, MSNBC host Joy Reid argued that schoolchildren should be allowed to have access to explicit books in their school libraries. This includes books with depictions of rape and incest. 

The remarks came in a discussion on Reid’s show with Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice about the pro-LGBTQ+ book “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” 

MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday had a sparring match with Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice on the nationwide debate of what books should or should not be available in public schools. 

The liberal host began by asking Justice, who had been outspoken on protecting "parental rights," whether "liberal" parents, "African American" parents, and "LGBTQ" parents have those same rights, which Justice repeated "every parent" has.

MSNBC host Ali Velshi remarked that Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice “liked to say the word dildo” on Friday after Justice used the word a number of times during an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid.

During the interview, in which Justice defended her organization’s fight to ban sexually explicit books with themes of rape, incest, and sex toys in school libraries, she repeatedly said the word “dildo,” using it four times in the span of just four minutes.

Afederal judge issued a ruling Friday that will temporarily block enforcement of an Iowa law that bans pornographic books from school libraries and prohibits teachers from raising LGBTQ+ issues.

The law, the Associated Press reports, was passed in early 2023 by the state’s Republican-led Legislature and Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. It bans books depicting sex acts from school libraries and classrooms. It also blocks teachers in Iowa classrooms from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation issues with students through the sixth grade.