Among the more distressing moments during oral argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a Supreme Court case challenging a Maryland school district’s use of children’s books with LGBTQ characters, came when Justice Neil Gorsuch started asking questions about bondage. Gorsuch wanted to drill down on the particulars of Pride Puppy, a rhyming alphabet book about a family searching for their lost dog at a pride parade. (Don’t worry, they find the little rascal by the letter V.)





Gorsuch, however, had other subjects on his mind. “That’s the one where [students] are supposed to look for the leather and things—and bondage? Things like that, right?” he asked the district’s lawyer, Alan Schoenfeld. “A sex worker? Sex worker, right?”

After Schoenfeld responded that, no, this picture book for prekindergartners does not include depictions of bondage or sex workers, Gorsuch sounded genuinely surprised and more than a little incredulous. “No? I thought—gosh,” he told Schoenfeld. “I read it!”

Here is the exchange in full, which you can also listen to here:





After oral argument, Republican lawmakers, conservative media outlets, and right-wing activist groups held up this exchange as more damning evidence of the prevalence of insidious pro-gay propaganda in America’s godless schools. Other voices in the conservative media ecosystem had been preparing for this moment for months: During a podcast in January, former Trump Justice Department flack Sarah Isgur explained that she would not want her child reading Pride Puppy, not “necessarily” because of its LGBTQ content, she said, but because of the “really graphic sex stuff.” Isgur went on to cite “L is for leather” and “C is for clamps” as examples of the “way overly sexual content” she would not tolerate in her home.