In the Connecticut hometown of Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale, a group of mothers including a “Christian taxpayer” is up in arms over the town library’s Pride book display and are demanding the offending materials be burned.
Booth & Dimock Memorial Library Director Margaret Khan said the incident happened June 22, when one of the mothers removed the books from the display and the group carried them to the front desk to complain.
Khan said the women responded with “hateful language” and told her the books in the display should be burned.
According to Khan, the library’s collection is evaluated based on specific criteria, including relevance and representation, and materials are evaluated by respected sources, including Library Journal and The New York Times Book Review, according to the Journal Inquirer.
Khan told the group they needed to follow library procedure and file a formal “request for reconsideration,” explaining their concerns in writing.
While library privacy guidelines proscribe naming the complainants, Khan did reveal the woman who filled out the request identified herself on the form only as a “Christian taxpayer.” It was unclear if the patron is a resident of Coventry.
In a statement, Town Council Chairwoman Lisa Thomas said, “I stand by our library and their mission to serve each individual in our community.”
“The hostile incident at our public library is part of a disturbing trend across the country. If an adult does not want their child to have access to certain reading materials or other resources, it is up to that adult to guide their child’s choices. Our library is a critical resource to our community to provide information, programming, and other supports. Public libraries embrace the needs of all people in the community.”
While police were not called during the incident, Town Manager John Elsesser said if something similar happens again, library staff should do so.
The uproar in Coventry occurred a week before a similar incident in nearby Colchester, Connecticut when a resident demanded the book Who is RuPaul? be removed from the library’s collection because it contained a “sexually provocative” image. A town selectman agreed the book should be deemed inappropriate for the children’s section.
Coventry’s hometown hero Hale, who spied for the Americans and was executed by the British, was the grandson of Puritan pastor John Hale, a prominent figure in the Salem witch trials.
As the James Webb Space Telescope releases its first images, there are renewed calls for NASA to distance itself from the man it’s named for.
The multi-billion-dollar telescope – the most powerful ever to be launched into space – garnered controversy last year after NASA chose to name it after government official James Webb, who is believed to have led a homophobic “purge” in the 50s and 60s.
At the time NASA said it had a “debt of gratitude” toward Webb, who was the second administrator of NASA, for his efforts in leading them through a portion of the Cold War.
However, Webb is also believed to have been one of the driving forces behind Senate discussions that kicked off what’s known in modern terms as the Lavender Scare. He was responsible for implementing policies that effectively “purged” LGBTQ+ people from NASA – policies that had been widespread in other workforces from the 1950s.
Now, with the newly released pictures showcasing the “next Hubble” telescope’s ability to take long-range images of galaxy clusters across space, astronomers have called for its renaming once more.
Assistant professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, tweeted as the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images, showing distant galaxies 13 billion years ago, were released on Monday (11 July).
“As one of the people who has been leading to push to change the name, today feels bittersweet, I’m so excited for the new images and so angry at NASA HQ,” Prescod-Weinstein said.
“NASA leadership has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that what is now public info about JW’s legacy means he does not merit having a great observatory named after him,” she continued.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson toldNPRon 30 September, 2021, that the agency did not plan to rename the telescope, saying that “we have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope.”
Astronomers Sarat Tuttle and Lucianne Walkowicz wrote for Scientific American about the debate surrounding the James Webb Space Telescope’s name in March 2021.
In the article, they criticised that NASA’s plan to launch the “incredible instrument” while carrying the name of a man “whose legacy at best is complicated and at worst reflects complicity in homophobic discrimination in the federal government”.
“Many astronomers feel a debt of gratitude for Webb’s work as NASA administrator and are appreciative of and nostalgic for the time during the Apollo program,” they continued. “But while appreciation and nostalgia are important, they are not sufficient.”
A petition for researchers and astronomy enthusiasts urging NASA to rename the telescope was created in the midst of the initial controversy. So far, it has reached over 1,700 signatures, with more expected to sign.
In the petition’s description, it notes several pieces of evidence to suggest that Webb’s past has deemed him unfit for accreditation. The list of evidence included archival evidence indicating Webb’s involvement in Lavendar Scare conversations, as well as a post-scare court case in which former NASA employee Clifford L. Norton sued for “review of his discharge for ‘immortal conduct’ and for possessing personality traits which render him ‘unsuitable for further government employment.’”
The petition continued with: “We, the future users of NASA’s next-generation space telescope and those who will inherit its legacy, demand that this telescope be given a name worthy of its remarkable discoveries, a name that stands for the future in which we are all free.”
A Boston affordable housing project for LGBTQ seniors was vandalized with homophobic and threatening graffiti Sunday.
The Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization that is leading the housing project’s construction, LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc., shared photos of the hateful messages — including “we will burn this” and “the f—– will die by fire” — on Facebook over the weekend.
“We were heartbroken to wake up this morning to the terrible news that The Pryde was vandalized overnight with hate speech and threats spraypainted on virtually every sign,” the group wrote in a statement on Facebook, referring to the project’s name. “We will not let bullies and cowards stop our work to create safe and welcome affordable housing for our LGBTQ elders. We will not let hate go unchallenged in Hyde Park.”
The Pryde, which began construction last month, will convert a former middle school in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood into 74 units of mixed-income housing for seniors. It was billed as New England’s first LGBTQ senior affordable housing project, and it is expected to welcome its first residents late next year.
“To see cowards come out under the dark of night and try to intimidate or put their hate on this larger community, it doesn’t represent what we’ve seen throughout this multiyear process, and we are just going to move even faster to get this done,” Mayor Michelle Wu said at an event Sunday held to condemn the vandalism, NBC Boston reported.
Affordable housing options for LGBTQ seniors have become increasingly popular in recent years, as elderly LGBTQ people are less likely to have family or financial support.
LGBTQ adults ages 45 or older report being less likely to have designated caretakers, according to a recent survey by AARP. Almost half of LGBTQ respondents said they were either extremely or very concerned about having enough family and social support as they age, and 52% reported feeling socially isolated.
The vandalism Sunday comes amid a wave of acts and threats of violence against the LGBTQ community across the country.
Most notably, police arrested 31 people at an annual LGBTQ Pride in the Park event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, last month on charges of suspicion of conspiracy to riot. Those who were arrested went to the event with gas masks and shields.
But in recent months, threats against LGBTQ people have also picked up in the country’s urban centers, which are largely seen as being the most accepting of the LGBTQ community.
Last month, police also arrested a Canadian who alleged to have threatened to shoot up a Pride on the Block event in West Palm Beach, Florida. In April, a man walked into a Brooklyn, New York, bar with a bottle of flammable liquid, poured it on the bar’s floor, lit a match and set the venue ablaze, police said. At a different bar in Brooklyn in February, someone threw a pepper bomb on the dance floor at a party for the Black queer community.
“Hate has no boundary. There are going to be people that have anti-LGBTQ views even in very progressive metropolitan areas,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s Cyberlaw Clinic and a transgender rights advocate who has been tracking threats against the LGBTQ community. “Places that are much more open are just more likely to be seen by people who share an intense hatred for the community.”
The rise in acts and threats of violence against LGBTQ Americans coincides with a surge in charged rhetoric surrounding LGBTQ issues.
In recent months, conservative lawmakers, television pundits and other public figures have accused opponents of a newly enacted Florida education legislation — which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — of trying to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children. The word “grooming” has long been associated with mischaracterizing LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers.
“When you start conflating LGBTQ people to pedophiles and being dangerous to children, it’s no surprise that people start to take radical actions into their hands and inflicting violence,” Caraballo said.
Emails and phone calls from same-sex couples, worried about the legal status of their marriages and keeping their children, flooded attorney Sydney Duncan’s office within hours of the Supreme Court’s decision eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.
The ruling last week didn’t directly affect the 2015 decision that paved the way for same-sex marriage. But, Duncan said, it was still a warning shot for families headed by same-sex parents who fear their rights could evaporate like those of people seeking to end a pregnancy.
“That has a lot of people scared and, I think, rightfully so,” said Duncan, who specializes in representing members of the LGBTQ community at the Magic City Legal Center in Birmingham.
Overturning a nearly 50-year-old precedent, the Supreme Court ruled in a Mississippi case that abortion wasn’t protected by the Constitution, a decision likely to lead to bans in about half the states. Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling involved only the medical procedure, writing: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
But conservative Justice Clarence Thomas called on his colleagues to reconsider cases that allowed same-sex marriage, gay sex and contraception.
The court’s three most liberal members warn in their dissent that the ruling could be used to challenge other personal freedoms: “Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.”
That prospect alarms some LGBTQ couples, who worry about a return to a time when they lacked equal rights to married heterosexual couples under the law. Many, fearful that their marital status is in danger, are moving now to square away potential medical, parental and estate issues.
Dawn Betts-Green and wife Anna Green didn’t waste time shoring up their legal paperwork after the decision. They’ve already visited a legal clinic for same-sex families to start the process of making a will.
“That way, if they blast us back to the Dark Ages again, we have legal protections for our relationship,” said Betts-Green, who works with an Alabama-based nonprofit that documents the history of LGBTQ people in the South.
As a white woman married to a Black transgender man, Robbin Reed of Minneapolis feels particularly vulnerable. A decision undermining same-sex marriage or interracial unions would completely upend Reed’s life, which includes the couple’s 3-month-old child.
“I have no expectation that anything about my marriage is safe,” said Reed, a legal aide.
Reed’s employer, Sarah Breiner of the Breiner Law Firm, is setting up seminars in both the Twin Cities and the Atlanta area to help same-sex couples navigate potential legal needs after the court’s decision. Breiner said helping people remain calm about the future is part of her job these days.
“We don’t know what might happen, and that’s the problem,” Breiner said.
In a sign of what could come, the state of Alabama already has cited the abortion ruling in asking a federal appeals court to let it enforce a new state law that makes it a felony for doctors to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones to trans people under age 19. The decision giving states the power to restrict abortion means states should also be able to ban medical treatments for transgender youth, the state claimed.
Any attempt to undo gay marriage would begin with a lawsuit, and any possible rollback is years away since no major legal threat is on the horizon, said Cathryn Oakley, senior counsel and state legislative director with the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.
“This is definitely a scary moment and people are nervous, but peoples’ marriages are still safe,” Oakley said.
Although the threat to same-sex couples feels particularly acute in conservative states, Oakley said she’s heard of people all over the country in recent days seeking second-parent adoptions, which protect a family by having the names of both adoptive parents on the birth certificate. People also are completing medical directives in case one spouse is incapacitated and doing general estate planning, she said.
Ryanne Seyba’s law firm in Hollywood, Florida, is offering free second-parent adoptions, which are similar to step-parent adoptions, for qualified same-sex couples to help ease some of the stress caused by the possible ripple effects of the abortion decision.
“We realized last week when (the ruling) came out we needed to do something,” said Seyba of The Upgrade Lawyers.
A judge in Broward County plans to have a special day in August to finalize all the adoptions at once, Seyba said. If nothing else, completing the process should give nervous families more security, she said.
“If gay marriage goes away, we don’t really know what’s going to happen,” she said. “It’s better to be on the safe side.’’
More than 500 years ago, Hawaiians placed four boulders on a Waikiki beach to honor visitors from the court of Tahiti’s king who had healed the sick. They were “mahu,” which in Hawaiian language and culture refers to someone with dual male and female spirit and a mixture of gender traits.
The stones were neglected for many years, as Christian missionaries and other colonizing Westerners suppressed the role of mahu in Hawaiian society. At one point a bowling alley was built over the boulders.
Officials restored the stones multiple times since the 1960s but informational plaques installed next to them omitted references to mahu.
The stones and the history of the four healers now are featured in an exhibit at Bishop Museum in Honolulu. The display highlights the deep roots of gender fluidity in Polynesia.
Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu is mahu and one of the exhibit’s curators. She said the healers were revered for their skill and hopes their story will show children in Hawaii that “proper Hawaiian culture” doesn’t pass judgment against those “who have elements of duality.”
“They were respected and honored because the people knew that their male and female duality made them even more powerful a healer,” Wong-Kalu said.
Kapaemahu was the leader of the four healers, and the exhibit is named The Healing Stones of Kapaemahu. Their story was passed down orally, like all Hawaiian stories, until a written language was developed in the 1800s.
But Hawaiians were discouraged from talking about mahu. DeSoto Brown, a Bishop Museum historian and the exhibit’s lead curator, said Christian missionaries who arrived in 1820 forbade anything that deviated from “clearly defined roles and presentation” of male and female genders.
The earliest known written account of the mahu healers is a 1906 manuscript by James Alapuna Harbottle Boyd, the son-in-law of Archibald Cleghorn, who owned the Waikiki property where the stones were at the time. Cleghorn’s wife, Princess Likelike, and daughter, Princess Kaiulani, were known to place seaweed and offer prayers at the stones when they swam.
Boyd’s manuscript “Tradition of the Wizard Stones of Ka-Pae-Mahu” said the Hawaiian people loved the healers for their “tall stature, courteous ways and kindly manners” and their cures became famous across Oahu.
“Their ways and great physique were overshadowed by their low, soft speech, and they became as one with those they came in contact with,” Boyd wrote. “They were unsexed, by nature, and their habits coincided with their womanly seeming, although manly in stature and general bearing.”
When it was time for the healers to leave, four boulders were brought down from Oahu’s Kaimuki area. Two were placed at the site of the healers’ hut and the others where they bathed in the ocean. Idols indicating the dual spirit of the healers were placed under each stone.
Many Hawaiians grew up not knowing about Hawaiian concepts of mahu or the stones because the American businessmen who overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 banned Hawaiian language instruction in schools and discouraged speaking it in homes. Generations of Hawaiians lost connections to cultural traditions.
Wong-Kalu, 50, said as a child she was made to believe mahu was a derogatory word. She remembers being among those who would sit on the stones and drape towels over them after swimming, oblivious to their significance.
Mahu are akin to “two-spirit” common in many Native American cultures, Wong-Kalu said, adding there are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual elements to being mahu. The representation of male and female depends on the person, she said.
“In Hawaii, one could exist really in the middle,” she said.
The stones nearly were lost just before the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At the time, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported the boulders would be blasted or removed after a developer leased Cleghorn’s property to build a bowling alley.
Following an outcry, plans emerged for a concrete walkway between the stones. But the developer instead built over them.
The stones were uncovered two decades later when the city tore down buildings to build a public beach park. Elders recalled the story of the stones and urged they remain. The city agreed and created a plaque that mentioned the Tahitian healers but didn’t say anything about them being mahu.
In 1997, the city fenced off the stones and dedicated a new plaque. It also didn’t reference mahu.
During both periods, waves of homophobia and transphobia washed over Honolulu. In the 1960s, a new state law prohibited cross-dressing and police forced drag performers to wear a button saying: “I Am A Boy.” Three decades later, there was backlash in Hawaii and nationally when the Hawaii Supreme Court sided with same-sex couples seeking the right to marry.
The Bishop Museum exhibit, on display through Oct. 16, recounts this history and displays artifacts like massage sticks and a medicine pounder that healers would have used centuries ago. Islander concepts of gender fluidity are explored through stories like that of King Kamehameha III and his male lover.
A map shows terms used in Polynesia for those who don’t identify as male or female, including “fa’afafine” in Samoa and “leiti” in Tonga.
Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson helped curate the exhibit and hope it will spur the city to tell the full story of the mahu at the site of the stones.
Ian Scheuring, spokesperson for Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, said the city is researching the issue and local leaders plan to meet with members of the LGBTQ and Native Hawaiian communities to learn how they can help tell the “true and complete” story of the healers, he said.
Tatiana Kalaniopua Young, a Native Hawaiian anthropologist, mahu and a director of the Hawaii LGBT Legacy Foundation, said the story the stones and healers helped her family understand that she was not “this weird creature that’s outside of the norm.” And that in a Hawaiian sense, she was part of the norm.
“It gave me a sense of place and purpose as a mahu and it really made me proud to be Kanaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiian,” she said.
Illinois Democrats are hoping to send a gay person to Congress for the first time in the state’s history.
Voters in the 17th Congressional District in northwest Illinois on Tuesday voted to have Eric Sorensen, a former meteorologist, become the Democratic nominee for the district’s U.S. House of Representatives seat currently held by retiring Democratic Congresswoman Cheri Bustos.
“THANK YOU to everyone who was a part of this movement,” Sorensen wrote on Twitter following his primary victory. “From day one this campaign has been built on three pillars: Trust, science, and communication. I’m honored to be your #IL17 Democratic nominee for Congress.”
Sorensen, who bested his closest primary opponent by more than 13,000 votes, has centered much of his campaign messaging around the issue of mitigating the effects of climate change.
Sorensen’s candidacy and potential to become the state’s first openly gay member of Congress has been met with celebration from those advocating for more of such representation on Capitol Hill. After Sorensen claimed victory on Tuesday, advocacy groups and political organizations like Equality PAC and the LGBTQ Victory Fund were quick to offer their support.
“It has never been more important to defend our pro-choice, pro-equality majority in Congress,” Victory Fund President Annise Parker said in a statement. “As a meteorologist, Eric spent the last two decades keeping his local community safe by telling the truth and promoting a pro-science agenda. His success tonight is a testament to his continued leadership and grassroots support, as well as a highly effective ground game focused on candid conversations about how to make government work for all Americans.”
Hoping to keep the district from flipping to Republican control in a midterm year that is expected to be an uphill battle for Democratic congressional majorities, Sorensen has also gained the backing of the district’s current congresswoman. Bustos took to Twitter following Sorensen’s victory to announce her support.
“Illinoisans deserve a representative who will fight for working families, help build our local economy and continue to lift up Midwestern voices,” Bustos wrote. “Eric will do that.”
Sorensen’s ultimate ascension to Illinois’ 17th Congressional District seat, however, is not assured. Though the district leans Democratic, it is widely labeled as a competitive race following nationwide redistricting of congressional maps ahead of this year’s midterms.
Such a competitive landscape is coupled with a competitive rival battling Sorensen for the seat.
His Republican opponent, lawyer and Army Reserve Capt. Esther Joy King, previously ran for the seat in 2020, losing to Bustos by just four percent of the overall vote.
Having already secured a number of high-profile Republican endorsements including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, King has already begun her November messaging campaign after besting her primary opponent by more than 30 percentage points.
“It doesn’t have to be a choice if we elect leaders who will put their constituents first rather than far-left, out-of-touch policies and that’s exactly what I’m running to do,” King said in a statement Tuesday night. “Let’s come together to win this in November.”
Groups like the Victory Fund, however, are remain optimistic that Sorensen’s potential to make history will be within reach when voters enter the polls on Nov. 8.
“Voters are clearly enthusiastic about Eric’s vision for a more equitable future,” Parker said. “We trust Eric will be a vital voice in Congress come November. The stakes have never been higher.”
Members of the Proud Boys disrupted yet another Pride-themed children’s program at a public library earlier this week. On Monday, seven men wearing the violent far-right group’s signature black and yellow polo shirts and other Proud Boys paraphernalia entered the St. Joseph County Public Library’s Virginia M. Tutt Branch in South Bend, IN where the Rainbow Family Storytime and arts and crafts event was scheduled to take place.
Photos posted on social media also show the men flashing white supremacist hand signs while smiling for the camera.
Members of the extremist group, whose leaders were indicted earlier this month on charges of seditious conspiracy for their alleged roles in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, entered the library before the event was scheduled to begin. Local police were called, but the disruption forced the library to cancel the event.
“This definitely came as a shock,” library system communications manager Marissa Gebhard told WVPE News. “We were not anticipating any problems.”
She added that the library plans to reschedule the event in the coming months and is determining whether additional security measures are necessary going forward.
“The bottom line is that the library will continue to offer inclusive programming,” Gebhard said. “A library is a place of belonging, and it’s a place for everyone.”
This is the fourth reported incident this month of Proud Boys members disrupting children’s events at libraries. Over the weekend, pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters created a human shield to block a group protesting an event at a library in Texas, while in Nevada a Proud Boys member reportedly armed with a gun disrupted a Drag Queen Story Hour event. Earlier this month, members of the hate group, which has been designated a terrorist organization in Canada and New Zealand, stormed a Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library in California and another Pride Story Time event in Wilmington, North Carolina, reportedly with the support of local police.
Far-right groups like the Proud Boys have been targeting family-friendly Pride events all month, instigated in part by anti-LGBTQ social media disinformation, right-wing media, and rhetoric from Republican lawmakers accusing the LGBTQ community and its allies of “grooming” children for abuse.
As Republican attacks on transgender people continue nationwide, five Democratic House representatives have introduced a Transgender Bill of Rights that would protect trans and non-binary people.
The bill would ban discrimination against gender identity and expression in public accommodations, employment, housing, and credit. The bill would also ensure access to gender-affirming medical care — including abortion and contraception — and would ban forced surgery on intersex children and infants. Intersex individuals are often subject to unnecessary genital surgeries before they can provide informed consent.
The bill would ban so-called “conversion therapy,” the pseudoscientific form of mental torture that purports to turn trans and non-binary people cisgender. The bill would also invest in community services to prevent anti-trans and anti-nonbinary violence as well as mental health services to assist survivors of violence and other community members.
Last, the bill would require the U.S. attorney general to designate a liaison within the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to enforce the civil rights of transgender people.
The bill was introduced by Democratic Representatives Pramila Jayapal (WA), David Cicilline (RI), Marie Newman (IL), Mark Takano (CA), and Ritchie Torres (NY). Cicilline, Takano, and Torres are out as gay. Newman, who just lost her primary election to a moderate, has a transgender daughter, and Jayapal has a non-binary child. The bill has 83 co-sponsors.
Between January and May of 2022, Republicans in state legislatures across the country introduced more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills, most of them targeting transgender youth, Takano said. Many of the anti-trans bills try to block youth access to sports, school sports and gender-affirming care — all of which can increase mental distress and suicidal ideation among trans people.
“Our transgender and non-binary siblings are hurting,” said Cicilline, Chair of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus. “Across the country, radical right-wing Republicans have introduced hundreds of bills attacking the LGBTQ+ community — particularly transgender and nonbinary youth — to score political points…. As Members of Congress we need to not just condemn these efforts but also put forward a vision of what equality truly looks like.”
Newman said, “The ability for trans folks to live free from discrimination is quite literally a life-and-death issue. This legislation is especially crucial right now, as right-wing extremists have grown increasingly vicious and targeted in their harassment of transgender Americans, both through the legislative process and outside of it.”
The bill also has the support of 26 LGBTQ and allied organizations including the Human Rights Campaign, the Movement Advancement Project, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and PFLAG National.
While the bill is unlikely to find the 10 Republican senators necessary to bypass the chamber’s filibuster, it still provides a roadmap for other states, cities, and organizations looking to protect trans and non-binary people’s civil rights.
As Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law — or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — comes into effect Friday, some of the state’s public school districts have begun rolling out new policies to limit LGBTQ issues and identities from being discussed in the classroom.
On Tuesday night, the Leon County School Board unanimously approved its “LGBTQ Inclusive School Guide,” which includes a provision to alert parents if a student who is “open about their gender identity” is in their child’s physical education class or with them on an overnight school trip.
“Upon notification or determination of a student who is open about their gender identity, parents of the affected students will be notified of reasonable accommodation options available,” the guidelines read. “Parents or students who have concerns about rooming assignments for their student’s upcoming overnight event based on religious or privacy concerns may request an accommodation.”
Representatives of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association accused school officials Monday of verbally warning educators not to wear rainbow articles of clothing, to remove pictures of their same-sex spouses from their desks andto remove LGBTQ safe space stickers from classroom doors. The district’s legal department confirmed in a statement provided to the teachers’ association that covers the Orlando area that staff who come into contact with students in kindergarten through third grade were cautioned concerning LGBTQ issues.
And late last month, the School District of Palm Beach County sent out a questionnaire to its teachers, asking them to review all course material and flag any books with references to sexual orientation, gender identity or race, a Palm Beach County high school special education teacher, Michael Woods, told NBC News. Several weeks prior, the district removed two books — “I Am Jazz” and “Call Me Max” — which touch upon gender identity, he said.
The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, HB 1557, bans “instruction” about sexual orientation or gender identity “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” A provision in the law also requires school staff to alert parents on “critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,” which many advocates have interpreted as a method to force educators to out their gay or trans students. In cases where teachers “believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect,” they are exempt from doing so.
Lawmakers who support the legislation — which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed in March — have repeatedly stressed that it will only apply to children in kindergarten through third grade and is about giving parents more jurisdiction over their young children’s education. They have also contended that it will not prohibit teachers and students from talking about their LGBTQ families or bar classroom discussions about LGBTQ history, including events like the 2016 attack at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando.
But critics and legal experts have said that the broad language of the law could open school districts and teachers to lawsuits from parents who believe any conversation about LGBTQ people or issues is “not age appropriate.” (Parents will be able to sue school districts for alleged violations, damages or legal fees.)
The state’s Department of Education is expected to release more information on the parameters of its standards later this summer. In an interview in April with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, DeSantis suggested the standards would apply the law beyond third grade and added “things like woke gender ideology have no place in the schools, period.”
State Rep. Carlos Smith, a Florida Democrat who is gay and has been an outspoken critic of the new law, said he was “not surprised” by the policies and guidelines being announced by schools in the state.
“We talked about this from the beginning,” he said. “What’s happening right now — with the censorship of rainbow flags and school districts preparing to basically push LGBTQ students and teachers into the closet — is exactly what we said would happen with the ‘Don’t Say Gay law.’”
When asked if the governor wanted to respond to school districts’ new guidelines on LGBTQ issues that appear to supersede the parameters of the new law, DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, said the state Department of Education is responsible for working with school districts to implement policies.
“This is not something the governor himself does,” she wrote in an email.
Beyond Florida, five other states — all of them in the South — have enacted laws that limit instruction or discussions about LGBTQ people or issues in school, and at least 32 other states have proposed such measures so far this year, according to according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank that has been tracking the bills.
Smith stressed that these policies will have consequences for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students, pointing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide attempts among the nation’s LGBTQ youths. A survey this year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that nearly 50% of the 35,000 LGBTQ youths surveyed said they seriously considered suicide within the last year.
“Creating safe spaces for LGBTQ kids in schools is a matter of life or death,” Smith said. “Ron DeSantis is creating toxic environments in our classrooms that can have devastating consequences for queer youth, and he does not care. It’s all about politics for him.”
In a letter addressed to the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, the district’s general counsel claimed a number of statements about what the Parental Rights in Education law would prohibit are not accurate, including a claim that “safe space stickers will be removed from classroom doors.” However, the letter then states it is “recommended that the safe space stickers be removed from K-3 classrooms so that classroom instruction did not inadvertently occur on the prohibited content of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Out of one side of their mouth, they’re saying it’s not accurate, and out of the other side, they’re saying, ‘Yeah, you might want to be careful,’” Clinton McCracken, the president-elect of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, said.
He expressed overall frustration with the new law and said his district’s attempt to clarify the legislation created even more confusion.
“So, which is it? Are teachers in K through eight supposed to go back into the closet, according to our legal team? Or are they allowed to act like every other heterosexual teacher who has a picture of a spouse on their desk?”
In Palm Beach County, Woods, who is gay, said that after receiving the questionnaire from school officials to flag course material or books with LGBTQ references, many of his colleagues are nervous they’ll be reprimanded if they miss something.
“I’ve had colleagues say to me, ‘Well, I’m just going to pack all of my books away and not have any out at all,’” he said. “That sounds like a knee-jerk reaction, but when you’re in that situation, it’s just one more stressor that you’re going to put on yourself. And is that really the hill you want to die on?”
Some LGBTQ teachers in school districts where guidelines have yet to be issued are even less sure of what they can or cannot say and wear next school year.
Brian Kerekes teaches math at a high school in Osceola County, which has yet to issue guidance for complying with the new law. Without guidelines in place, he worries that mistakes are bound to happen. Recently, he said, a staffer was asked to remove a “genderbread person” — an animated diagram used to teach children about gender identity — from his office.
“We’re just caught in the middle trying to figure out what is and isn’t OK while still trying to do what is our primary function, which is supporting our students and giving them a safe space to learn,” he said. “It’s going to be a mess.”
Kerekes said he also anticipates school districts will start letting go of teachers who are accused of violating the law even if they are found to have done nothing wrong. He points to the fact that all of the state’s public school teachers are hired on a year-to-year contractual basis and that the law prohibits school districts from recouping legal fees in cases where they win.
“Even if an investigation turns out to be bogus, a principal could still decide that it just isn’t worth having the teacher around anymore and just drop them,” he said. “I just worry that we’re going to be spending our time on nonissues instead of doing our jobs.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted at the possibility of legislation to codify the right of same-sex couples to marry, which many fear is in danger after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, as part of an effort to secure “freedoms which Americans currently enjoy.”
Pelosi suggested such legislation could be in the works in a “Dear Colleague” letter on Monday to fellow members of the House Democratic caucus addressing plans for congressional action after the ruling last week in Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right for women to access an abortion.
The concurrence of U.S. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is a core component of the letter from Pelosi, who expressed consternation about his rejection of finding unenumerated rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“It is still appalling to me that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would agree that a Constitutional right does not exist if it was not spelled out explicitly and in public when the 14th Amendment was ratified over 150 years ago,” Pelosi said. “While this extremist Supreme Court works to punish and control the American people, Democrats must continue our fight to expand freedom in America. Doing so is foundational to our oath of office and our fidelity to the Constitution.”
Thomas said in his concurring opinion he welcomes vehicles that would allow the court to revisit other major decisions, such as the Griswold decision guaranteeing the right to contraceptives; the Lawrence decision decriminalizing sodomy for same-sex couples and others; and the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
Although Pelosi doesn’t explicitly say she’ll introduce legislation on same-sex marriage, she brought up “access to contraception and in-vitro fertilization to marriage equality,” then added, “Legislation is being introduced to further codify freedoms which Americans currently enjoy. More information to follow.”
“It is clear from how Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell stacked the Supreme Court that elections have ramifications,” Pelosi said. “It is essential that we protect and expand our pro-choice Majorities in the House and Senate in November so that we can eliminate the filibuster so that we can restore women’s fundamental rights – and freedom for every American.”
Any legislation seeking to codify marriage equality would have to get around marriage being an issue administered by the states under the guidelines of the U.S. Constitution. In the past, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has introduced the Respect for Marriage Act, which would have required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage and states to recognize same-sex marriage performed elsewhere.
Pelosi’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on the possibility of marriage legislation or the timeline for U.S. House approval of such a measure. Nadler’s office also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.