Three Nigerian men convicted of engaging in homosexuality have been sentenced to death by stoning by an Islamic sharia court in the country’s northern state of Bauchi.
The three men, including a 70-year-old, were arrested on June 14 and have allegedly confessed to the crime, according to the head of the religious police in Bauchi. They were sentenced late last week but can appeal within 30 days.
Nigeria’s Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, which was signed into law by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014, makes same-sex relationships punishable by up to 14 years in prison. But in the predominantly Muslim areas of northern Nigeria, sharia courts are used to punish crimes like adultery and blasphemy, though death penalties passed by sharia courts must be approved by the state governor.
Activists are speaking out on the wake of the sentencing. YouTuber Victor Emmanueltweeted about the sentencing over the weekend, expressing his frustration that it wasn’t sparking more outrage.
“I remember when that girl was burned to death by religious extremists and the whole Twitter was on fire,” he wrote. “Now three men have been sentenced to death by stoning for homosexuality in Bauchi and y’all are quiet?????”
Maduagwu posted an image on Instagram with the text: “I was born GAY I am still Gay And will forever remain GAY [sic]” The message went on to decry “erroneous” and “undemocratic” sharia laws in northern Nigeria.
Maduagwu, who had previously denied being gay, also called on President Joe Biden to sanction Nigeria for “ignoring the fundamental human rights” of its LGBTQ citizens.
“Dear President Joe Biden, we need the US government to sanction President Buhari and his top advisers over ignoring the Fundamental Human rights of #LGBT in Nigeria,” he wrote in the post’s caption.
“just few days ago, a Sharia court sentence #Gay men to be STONED, is this our country a #Democracy or #Banana Republic? Yet, our President and his CORRUPT ministers kept quiet, he keeps traveling to different developed countries like KUNU Mosquito, yet he never borrow wisdom from these countries RESPECT for Human Right.”
“The same set of people who gives judgement for Gay people to be STONED are the same that takes laws into their hands all in the name of Christian blasphemy on Mohammed, when will this madness stop?”
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.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed interest in loosening libel and defamation laws to allow an anti-LGBTQ hate church to sue an organization that called them out as a hate group.
Thomas, who supports ending same-sex marriage in the U.S., expressed this interest in his recent dissent disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the anti-LGBTQ church’s case.
He was the lone dissenter to comment on the court’s recent refusal to hear a lawsuit brought by D. James Kennedy Ministries, an evangelical Christian media company that operates the Florida-based Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM).
CRM sued the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) for libelous defamation after SLPC listing CRM as a hate group. CRM said that in 2017, the online retailer Amazon cited the SLPC’s listing as a reason to block CRM from participating in its AmazonSmile program. The program lets Amazon users to donate to nonprofit organizations. (AmazonSmile has a history of allowing other anti-LGBTQ groups to fundraise through its platform.)
The SLPC noted that the church was founded by Rev. D. James Kennedy, a man who promoted the anti-gay works of R.J. Rushdoony, a man who supported the death penalty for homosexual “abominators.” Kennedy’s 1989 CRM newsletter included photos of kids along with the tagline, “Sex With Children? Homosexuals Say Yes!”
In 2009, CRM hired anti-gay activist Robert Knight as a senior writer. Knight has opposed letting “pansexual, cross-dressing” homosexuals serve openly in the military. Knight has written that gay marriage “entices children to experiment with homosexuality” and said that acceptance of homosexuality leads to “a loss of stability in communities, with a rise in crime, sexually transmitted diseases and other social pathologies. Still another is a shortage of employable, stable people,” the SLPC noted.
When CRM sued SLPC, a federal district court judge dismissed CRM’s defamation claim because Supreme Court precedent says that a libel charge must prove malicious intent. CRM couldn’t, but they appealed the judge’s decision anyway. The group received a second legal defeat in July 2021 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the lower court’s dismissal, Law & Crime reported.
“We hold that the district court was correct in finding that Coral Ridge’s interpretation of Title II would violate the First Amendment by essentially forcing Amazon to donate to organizations it does not support,” the three-judge panel wrote in its decision.
The Supreme Court declined to hear CRM’s case on Monday. In his dissent, Thomas wrote that the SPLC “caused Coral Ridge concrete financial injury by excluding it from the AmazonSmile donation program.” He also said that the court should revisit the “actual malice” standard in libel cases established by the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.
In that case, the then-Montgomery, Alabama Public Safety Commissioner L.B. Sullivan sued The New York Times for publishing an ad that had several factual inaccuracies about the local police. Since his post oversees police action, the ad defamed him by proxy, he argued.
The court ruled that the First Amendment allows newspapers to defame public officials, even with false statements, as long as they don’t act with “actual malice.” Actual malice was defined as making a false statement to deliberately harm another person or with reckless disregard for whether a statement is true or false.
The court’s ruling sets U.S. libel law from that of other countries, such as the United Kingdom. In the U.K., libel law requires that one must simply prove that a false statement has harmed one’s reputation, regardless of intent.
In his dissent, Thomas wrote, “This case is one of many showing how New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”
He said that the Supreme Court justices who decided the New York Times case issued “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.” He added that the justices “never even inquired whether ‘the First or Fourteenth Amendment, as originally understood, encompasses an actual-malice standard.’”
Thomas’ willingness to weaken libel laws follows his stated wish to overturn previous Supreme Court decisions legalizing access to contraceptives and same-sex marriage rights as well as the 2003 ruling that struck down anti-sodomy laws as discriminatory against gay people.
In his footnote on the recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court “erroneously” decided in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to treat abortion as a fundamental right that should be free from government interference, something known in legal terms as “substantive due process.”
Thomas wrote, “We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents. We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents… For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the case that granted the right to contraception] Lawrence [the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws], and Obergefell [the case that legalized marriage equality].”
The most recent round of primary elections this week saw wins for LGBTQ lawmakers in at least three states ahead of November’s general election.
Former meteorologist Eric Sorensen won the Democratic primary for Illinois’s 17th Congressional District, putting him on track to be the first out LGBTQ lawmaker ever elected to Congress from the state. He’ll face off against Republican nominee Esther Joy King in November in a race that the New York Times is calling a toss-up.
In Colorado, incumbent Gov. Jared Polis (D) will defend his seat against Republican nominee Heidi Ganahl. The only out gay man elected governor of a U.S. state, Polis ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Elsewhere in the state, incumbent state Rep. Brianna Titone (D), the first transgender person to serve in the Colorado legislature, will now face Republican nominee Christina Carlino in the race to represent Colorado’s 27th congressional district.
Oklahoma state Rep. Mauree Turner (D), the first nonbinary person elected to any state legislature, handily beat challenger Joe Lewis in the Democratic primary, and will now go on to face independent Jed Green in the general.
In Utah, state Sen. Derek Kitchen (D), the only out LGBTQ member of the state’s legislature, leads challenger Dr. Jennifer Plumb by two points. That primary has not yet been called.
Tuesday’s elections also saw Rep Marie Newman (D-IL) lose her race against fellow incumbent Rep. Sean Casten. The two lawmakers found themselves competing in the same district after Illinois legislators redrew the state’s congressional map. Newman, whose daughter is transgender, was seen as the more progressive of the two Representatives. The defeat would seem to bring to an end her ongoing battle with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose office is located across from hers, over a trans Pride flag Newman posted outside her door.
Meanwhile, anti-LGBTQ extremist Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her primary after denouncing the separation of church and state, one of the cornerstones of American democracy.
“And I’m tired of this ‘separation of church and state’ junk, that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does,” Boebert recently told the crowd at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colorado.
Nearly a dozen anti-LGBTQ bills are scheduled to go into effect today in states across the U.S. Alabama, Florida, Indiana, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah will all see restrictions placed on trans athletes, bans on LGBTQ topics in public schools, and other laws.
More than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state houses across the county this year. Over two dozen have passed, and ten of those go into effect today—a grim record for 2022. According to the Trevor Project, July 1 represents the single day when the most anti-LGBTQ bills will be implemented this year.
“We’ve already seen the impact of debating bills targeting our young people,” Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs for The Trevor Project said. “85% of transgender and nonbinary youth say recent debates about state laws restricting the rights of transgender people have negatively impacted their mental health. And now, LGBTQ youth will have to face the reality of these harmful bills being enacted into law, waking up to find they are no longer able to say who they are at school, safely use the bathroom, or play sports with their friends.”
One of the laws taking effect today is Florida’s infamous HB 1557, commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill for its ban on any mention of LGBTQ issues, people, or history in kindergarten through third grade. The bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law earlier this year, has provided a template for similar laws across the U.S., some of which go into effect today as well.
But new polling data released this week by The Trevor Project and Morning Consult finds that most Florida voters oppose banning or limiting LGBTQ content in public schools. They’re also less likely to vote for candidates who support criminalizing gender-affirming care for trans youth.
Florida’s so-called “Stop Woke Act” also takes effect today. The law aims to limit the instruction of topics related to the history of racism in the U.S.
Florida’s new laws may be the most high-profile, but they certainly aren’t the only anti-LGBTQ laws taking effect today. In Alabama, HB 322 will restrict transgender students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity and ban instruction of LGBTQ topics in schools, similar to Florida’s law.
Bans on transgender women and girls competing in sports take effect in both Indiana and South Dakota. South Dakota’s HB 1012 will also place restrictions on LGBTQ topics in higher education.
In Tennessee, a total of three anti-LGBTQ laws take effect today. Two are aimed at limiting trans participation in sports, while a third restricts LGBTQ materials available in schools. And yet another law banning transgender women and girls from participating in sports takes effect today in Utah.
“Pride Month may be over, but the fight goes on,” Ames said. “We enter July with a reminder that the LGBTQ community is part of a legacy of resistance and resilience. And we call on every elected official, company, community member and leader who wore a rainbow flag yesterday to make good on that commitment today. It will take each of us working together to build a safer, more affirming world for LGBTQ youth.”
As voters head to the polls today for primaries in 5 states and the District of Columbia, a record number of LGBTQ candidates for federal office are bringing the prospect of equal representation in Washington ever closer to reality.
A record 104 LGBTQ candidates have mounted campaigns for House or Senate seats this year, with 57 candidates still in the running.
Currently, 11 out LGBTQ lawmakers serve in Congress, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), plus nine members of the House, all running for reelection.
Nine more LGBTQ candidates for House seats are in competitive races. Wins in their states would bring total LGBTQ representation in the House to 4%, or about half of the estimated population of LGBTQ people in the US.
Those nine include 4 women, 2 Latinx candidates, and an LGBTQ immigrant.
Here’s a breakdown:
In Vermont, state senator Becca Balint is facing off against three other Democrats in the August 9 primary for a shot at an open seat representing Vermont’s At-Large Congressional District. Balint is the first woman and first out gay person to serve as the Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore, and would be the first out LGBTQ person and the first woman elected to Congress from Vermont.
In North Carolina, County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, won the Democratic primary handily and faces off against Republican Chuck Edwards for a seat currently occupied by primary loser Madison Cawthorn.
Beach-Ferrara is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the founding Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) and would be the first out LGBTQ person elected to any federal position from North Carolina.
In Arizona, state representative Daniel Hernandez faces off against two other candidates in the Democratic primary in August for an open seat in Arizona’s 6th congressional district.
Hernandez attended the University of Arizona and interned for then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, whom he was with the day she was shot; he was the first to administer first aid to the Congresswoman before the EMTs arrived. He was named a national hero by President Obama.
Hernandez would be the second Latinx out LGBTQ member of Congress.
In New York, former Congressional aide and businessman Robert Zimmerman will face off against five other Democrats for an open seat in the August 23 primary in Long Island’s 3rd congressional district.
Zimmerman has been honored by the LGBTQ Network of Long Island and Queens and the Long Island Progressive Coalition, in addition to serving as President of Great Neck B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Congress Long Island Division.
The Empire State’s congressional delegation currently includes three LGBTQ members: Ritchie Torres, the first out LGBTQ Afro-Latinx person elected to the U.S. Congress; Mondaire Jones, one of the first two Black gay men, along with Torres, elected to Congress; and Sean Patrick Maloney.
Zimmerman would be the first out LGBTQ member of Congress from Long Island.
In California, two-term Long Beach mayor Robert Garcia is running for an open seat to represent the city in Congress from California’s 42nd district. Garcia was re-elected to a second term as mayor by almost 80% of the vote in 2018.
Garcia immigrated to the United States at age 5 and holds an M.A. from the University of Southern California and an Ed.D. in Higher Education from Cal State Long Beach, where he also earned his B.A. in Communications. He won an open primary in June with 46% of the vote, 20 points higher than his general election opponent for the seat, Republican John Briscoe.
Garcia would be the first out LGBTQ immigrant elected to Congress.
Also in California, former federal prosecutor Will Rollins is running to represent Riverside County in the state’s 41st district against Republican Congressman Ken Calvert in the 42nd district. Rollins won the Democratic primary June 7.
Rollins earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth in 2007 and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 2012. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he helped prosecute some of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
Rollins’ election would make him the second out gay man from California to serve in congress, after incumbent Mark Takano, from the same district; Takano is running in 2022 for a seat in the state’s 39th following re-districting.
In Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner is running as the Democratic nominee for an open seat representing the state’s 5th district, after winning a primary in May 15 points ahead of her opponent. She faces Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in the general.
McLeod-Skinner currently serves as an elected board member of the Jefferson County Education Service District. This is her second run at Congress, after a change-making grassroots campaign for Oregon’s second district in 2018, resulting in the largest voter swing (+26) of all congressional races that year.
McLeod-Skinner would be Oregon’s first out LGBTQ member of Congress.
In Maryland, former Assembly member Heather Mizeur is running to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District. Mizeur faces one other opponent in Maryland’s July primary to face off against Republican incumbent Andrew Harris in the general.
In the Maryland Assembly, Mizeur took a leading role in passing marriage equality, banning fracking, enacting criminal justice reforms, and expanding health insurance for children, women, and families.
Mizeur would be the first out LGBTQ member of Congress from the state.
In Illinois, popular TV meteorologist Eric Sorensen is running against five opponents in the Democratic primary for an open seat to represent the state’s 17th congressional district.
Sorenson says he was pushed out of his first television gig in Texas, with a copy of his contract sitting on his boss’s desk and the “morals clause” highlighted.
Sorenson would be the first out LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Illinois.
Thomas wrote that, even though the Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention abortion rights, the Supreme Court “erroneously” decided in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to treat abortion as a fundamental right that should be free from government interference, something known in legal terms as “substantive due process.”
Thomas wrote, “We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents. We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents… For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the case that granted the right to contraception] Lawrence[the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws], and Obergefell [the case that legalized marriage equality].”
In response, Obergefell made a statement, saying, “Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice appointed by humans, he is not the Supreme Deity. The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them. If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror.”
Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, 17 states have “trigger laws” that could immediately outlaw abortion. Some of those states will do that by defining life as beginning at fertilization. This re-definition is likely to impact the ability of infertile and LGBTQ people to have children via in vitro fertilization (IVF), the fertility treatment that implants eggs with sperm for implantation in a gestational parent.
IVF usually involves fertilizing multiple eggs to increase the likelihood of the treatment being successful. Once the gestational parent becomes pregnant through IVF, medical professionals discard any extra fertilized eggs.
“Without the protections of Roe v Wade, it is possible that state lawmakers may feel empowered to create barriers for people to access medical procedures like IVF – which is deeply troubling for LGBTQ+ people and anyone who needs access to IVF to expand their family,” Shelbi Day, Chief Policy Officer at the nonprofit organization Family Equality, told LGBTQ Nation.
Members of the Cape Fear Proud Boys staged a demonstration outside a local library in Wilmington, N.C., on Tuesday where a Pride-themed storytime event was being held. The 15 masked men wearing the violent far-right group’s trademark black and yellow shirts were allowed into the library during the event by New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office deputies.
“I certainly felt like I was in danger when they entered the building,” Emily Jones, a parent who attended the event with her 17-month-old daughter, told Wilmington’s Star News Online.
According to a statement from the sheriff’s office, a deputy positioned himself between the demonstrators and the private room where four parents and six children under the age of seven had gathered for the event.
“The supervisor instructed the demonstrators that they were not allowed to enter the room,” the statement said. “At no time did Sheriff Deputies witness nor did any library staff report any of the demonstrators causing a disturbance within the library or try to enter the private room that was holding the reading. After the reading, all the participants left the library with no incident.”
New Hanover County’s chief diversity and equity officer Linda Thompson claims that the protesters did not enter the building until the Pride event had ended.
“Anyone from the public is permitted inside the building as long as they are not actively protesting or disturbing other patrons, based on the library’s code of conduct,” she said.
But witnesses dispute this account of the event. Several of the parents who attended have taken to Facebook, describing taunts and threats from demonstrators as deputies stood by. The deputies were overly friendly with the masked vigilantes, witnesses say, going so far as to fist bump the hate group members.
Jones reports seeing protesters in plain clothes holding signs that read “LGBT is grooming our kids” and “the library is responsible for child abuse” when she arrived. Once the Proud Boys members were allowed into the library, they reportedly stationed themselves outside the locked room where the event was taking place and shouted “Bring out the drag queens! Bring out the drag queens!”
“They yelled at me, they yelled at my kids. They told my kids they were going to hell,” another parent who wished to remain anonymous told Wilmington’s WWAY 3. “They told me I was a child abuser, they quoted scripture. We were escorted inside by a library employee”
In a Facebook post, Angie Smith Kahney writes that she saw officers “escort the Proud Boys and their klan into the building straight to the room where children as young as 1 were with their parents, while they shouted obscenities and threats.”
Another witness, Sandra Dawn writes that she “watched these protestors SCREAM at young children and their families as they exited the building. The sheriffs allowed these people to stand within feet of young children and SCREAM at them.”
Earlier this month, the Anti-Defamation League linked the recent spate of far-right extremist groups targeting Pride events to both racist and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that has proliferated online. The ADL Center on Extremism reported seven incidents of far-right groups targeting the LGBTQ community during the weekend of June 11–12 alone. The demonstrations and disruptions are “fueled in part by the claim that members of the LGBTQ+ community are pedophiles who are “grooming” children.”
“Some white supremacists, meanwhile, associate antisemitic and racist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement with the LGBTQ+ community,” the report continues, “alleging that LGBTQ+ culture and pedophilia are promoted by elites to encourage lower white birthrates in order to ‘replace’ the white population with Black and Brown people.”
Students at a Washington state high school Monday staged a walk-out in solidarity with a trans student, who was beaten in the school’s hallways the week before.
The walk-out prompted a threat by another student “to aim a machine gun” at the rallying students, according to Kalama police. The Kalama Middle and High Schools, which share a campus, were put into lockdown.
Last week, a transgender student was assaulted in the school’s halls just as students were leaving for the day.
Witnesses say another student repeatedly kicked the transgender student, who is a boy, with steel-toe boots, while yelling homophobic and transphobic slurs.
“The student had been on the ground, begging him to stop and he just kept going,” said Katrina Rick-Mertens, a sophomore at the school and rally organizer.
The victim was subsequently treated in hospital and has returned to class, according to the school district.
At Monday’s walkout, the boy threatening “to aim a machine gun” at protesters made the comment to another student not affiliated with the protest. That student, who says he didn’t see a gun, reported the comments to school officials.
Police say they located the student and took him into custody.
The attack, walkout, and subsequent threats followed reported inaction by the school against what students say is the growing influence of hate groups. Students have posted Nazi imagery in the school, which is just across the state border from Portland, and on social media.
According to parent Melissa Cierley, bullying at the high school is endemic.
“There’s a certain population that seems to be able to get away with whatever they want,” she said.
Her daughter Lillie says she’s been the victim of sexually harassing insults and threats, and things thrown at her like books, staplers, or “anything they can get their hands on.”
Cierley and Rick-Martens say while they tell school administrators about the bullying, they’re never told about anything being done about the incidents, only to see the bullying continue.
“It’s just really heartbreaking to not be taken seriously,” Cierley says.
“You’d think that after so many students go to them about hate speech and going to them that we need these bullies to stop, that they would do something. We shouldn’t have to come to this point to rally together for them to listen to us,” Rick-Mertens said.
“If students are saying that they feel like this, they feel like there is a problem, then there is truth to that,” Kalama School District Communications Manager Nick Shanmac said. “As a school, as a district, we need to be listening.”
Rick-Mertens posted on Instagram after the rally: “Remember, staying silent only helps the oppressor and never the victim. Use your voice for good.”
