As back-to-school season is in full swing, many teachers are on edge. There were 277 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in 2025 that were meant to restrict student and educator rights. These include trans-exclusionary pronoun lawsand so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws, which disallow teachers from educating students about sexual orientation or gender identity. And in June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of parents who wanted to opt their children out of classes that featured books with LGBTQ characters.

In addition, there have been numerous false claims that teachers are grooming their students by discussing LGBTQ issues in the classroom. Vice President JD Vance has said that childless teachers are “trying to brainwash the minds of our children,” and President Donald Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that children are undergoing transgender surgery at school.

We wanted to understand how queer and ally teachers are navigating the political climate. So we called up six of them from various red and blue states to get their take on teaching in America in 2025.

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, I’m Spencer Macnaughton. Today I am here with a set of teachers from across the United States, LGBTQ teachers and allies alike, and we want to get their perspective on what it’s like to be a teacher in America, as we’re in the throes of back-to-school season. Everyone, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Daniel Greenspan: Great to be here.

SM: So I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t start right away with the events that happened last week with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. How do you approach a subject like this that is so complicated for adults to discuss with your students, if at all?

DG: I’m in a much more rural area and I definitely got asked about it. I’m kind of on edge about the whole topic because several teachers in my district have been fired just over the last week. I try not to discuss it if possible. It’s a shame that we can’t discuss controversial topics, but you know, they are kids and they’re prone to misinterpret things, and the second a parent gets wind of it, you’ll be very quickly removed.

SM: I feel like if I had kids, I’d want my kids to be learning about tough topics from their teachers, but you’re saying that you’re worried that you could get fired if you talked about that. Is that a sentiment that’s felt across the board here?

Mardy Burleson: Absolutely. Absolutely.

SM: Mardy, tell us more about that.

MB: Well, I have been on the receiving end of a group of parents, community members, for just being an ally. And it’s been pretty horrific, and to the point where it’s now a lawsuit that I initiated because it got so threatening that I had no choice.

SM: And Mardy, just for folks and people listening who don’t know your story, you essentially gave a worksheet to your students that asked them what their pronouns were, and that got out to some of the parents in your class, and you were subsequently doxed, called a groomer, and really harassed online for many, many months to the point where you were afraid to walk down aisles in the grocery store. Is that all accurate?

MB: That is accurate. Yes, that is accurate. I was on paid admin leave for my own safety. I mean all the teachers in here knows what they are, they’re just get-to-know you questionnaires at the beginning of the year and there was an optional question on there: What are your preferred pronouns? And, it got crazy online, it was like threats [on] my life.

SM: When you go through that at school, getting doxed by parents in the community because you’re trying to teach about pronouns, tell me what that does to you personally from a mental health perspective.

MB: Well, I mean, it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting, the amount of weight of the worry, of the guilt, the shame, and you know, to be honest, the biggest toll aside from my family that it took out on them having to deal with the backlash of me being an ally, was my kids that I teach. At that point, I was teaching middle school, and they pulled me out the very next day after this story was written about me. They, the district, pulled me out, put me on paid admin leave immediately. And there were at least two kids that were gender neutral in a different class than this one, where this parent was. One of them, every day—I wasn’t allowed to communicate with them at all—none of my students previously—and every day she would go to my bestie’s room and be like, “Ms. King, is Ms. B coming back?” Every single day. My friend would be like, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it.”

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SM: It’s such a balance too that the LGBTQ community has become so politicized and, you know, there’s been dozens and dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills from book bans, to don’t say gay laws, to so many rules about can you use pronouns? Can you not use this? Particularly in red states. I’m curious as allies or as queer teachers, how has it inhibited you or stifled your ability to teach what you want as it relates to LGBTQ studies?

AJ Pound: Something that really sticks out to me is that at my first—at the suburban school that I was subsequently bullied out of by a series of parents and then a new principal who just didn’t want to take the flak, I guess. We did like a poem-a-day type of thing. And one poem, one of them, was by a non-binary poet. I mentioned it in class, and a parent sent me a nasty email. That kind of thing really, especially when you’re a new teacher, sticks with you, and it just makes you afraid to touch, to even get close. That was a total non-invasive way, I think, of just bringing in a queer voice, and the response from just that attempt really put me off. It’s one of those things, though, where you just have to accept that at school, unfortunately, you have to be on and performing 100% of the time already. So it’s just adding that little extra bit of hiding.

J. Everett Irwin: I had had over a decade into the district that I was teaching at when I started using gender neutral names and they/them pronouns in story problems for math. I thought I was in a safe position, and it came back again.

DG: There’s definitely a degree of detraction from the lessons. I couldn’t read something by James Baldwin and not mention how his sexuality influenced the work. That’s incredibly disrespectful. There’s a degree of shame almost in not standing up for this stuff. To think this stuff doesn’t trickle down to the kids is naive.

SM: You said a word there that I thought was striking is “shame.” You feel shame, some shame when you can’t teach that.

DG: You know, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this job? It’s to help kids grow and become better human beings. Everyone’s so quick to jump on, we have an agenda, but really my only agenda is helping kids out. There are easier and better ways to make money if I wanted. I want to be able to teach this stuff and it feels shameful not to allow myself to kind of live in that fearful state.

AP: As a young teacher, I came out when I was student teaching. My first day at this school, as a brand new first-year teacher, was my first classroom. I was so excited. I had my rainbow planner sitting on my desk. After school that day, my principal told me that a parent called in and was crying in tears on the phone, worried about her daughter and how I was going to corrupt her daughter because of my rainbow planner. So there were too many things going on at once where it was like, I felt shamed that I had upset a parent, that this indicated that I was bad at my job or I wasn’t a safe teacher. I felt shamed that people were threatened by my identity. I felt shamed that a student in my classroom was upset. Then I also felt shame that I was shamed because I was like, wait, no, I’m proud, I’m out, right? I’m over this. But I think there’s something that happens when you’re raised in a society that tells you constantly to [be] quiet and squash it down. There are kids in my classroom right now who feel the way I do or feel worse than I do because the world they’re entering is not safe for them.

Caitlin Pelletier: My first three years of teaching were in Maine, and I was teaching in a really tiny, tiny, tiny small town. A student, a transgender student, came up to me and asked me to start a [Gay-Straight Alliance] GSA. And I was like, yeah, I’m down. Then I went forward with the principal, trying to see if I could do that. He kind of made it impossible to do. He was telling me it couldn’t be anything to do with rainbows, the name had to be something completely not related to pride. Anytime a student came out, I would have to report that to the parents. I feel like he just kept putting things in my way to get it so that I couldn’t ever start this, and then COVID happened, and then I couldn’t anyways. So I feel so bad for that student because I know she was very much bullied there.

Alyssa Hamilton: For me, I’m very grateful that I work in a building that, I think our administrators, as well as a majority of the staff, we understand that when we’re building a curriculum, a curriculum should look like a mirror to our students and not necessarily them looking through a window. We try to incorporate all of our students’ lived experiences to make our pedagogy culturally relevant and responsive. We’re really lucky to work in school districts in New York City that allow us to have that kind of onus in our curriculum. Because I think if I was in another school district where I felt like any of my students’ voices were being stifled or their lived experience wasn’t being shown within the classroom, just from the curriculum standpoint, you start to see lack of engagement. If I’m a student who I totally cannot relate to what you’re presenting to me and you don’t try in any way to make it relatable, then there is no context. If there’s no context, then there’s no question that I’m going to want to answer. I want the creativity and the experiences and the cultures, the socioeconomics, the gender identities, the sexualities of my students to be present within what I’m doing in the classroom so that they feel like even though we might be reading Chaucer, there’s some point in the lesson where they can identify as themselves within that piece of the curriculum. That all happens when you have the classroom community and culture built in from day one of the school year.

SM: That’s awesome.

MB: Wow! Just wow.

SM: Mardy, how is what Alyssa described to you that she’s up to in New York City differ from what you’re up to in South Carolina?

MB: It is the polar opposite. I am not allowed to incorporate other voices. So I’m teaching entrepreneurship right now, and even as we’re going through entrepreneurial traits and then the behaviors of entrepreneurs and stuff, there’s major traits in there, of a true entrepreneur, include compassion and understanding world cultures and all of this. And I had to water all my stuff down intentionally, including different faces and different pronouns, and I had to go back and well, I don’t want to say whitewash, but in South Carolina, that’s exactly what it is. Our department, our superintendent, has adapted the Prager University as a statewide acceptable curriculum base.

SM: And PragerU, for those listening, is a designated anti-LGBTQ hate group by many civil rights groups and extremely far right in its ideology and has been, to Mardy’s point, adopted in many school districts across the U.S. Sorry, go ahead.

DG: It’s unbelievable.

MB: Yeah, the whole state of South Carolina. It’s not even an LGBTQ plus, it’s brown and black skinned people and kids. It is… I mean, we’re the home of Nancy Mace.

AP: It’s awful. I definitely struggle with anxiety and depression. It feels like everything I do in the classroom is under a microscope lens. I was the emotional support teacher, they literally called me that, for this group of kids in my middle school. These are real children who really needed an adult who would listen to them. Just listen. That’s all I did. They came into my classroom while I was grading things at the end of the day, and then they left when they were comfortable leaving. That was it. But that’s exactly where those parents that didn’t like me, that principal that didn’t like me, wanted to take it. They were like, well, that’s suspicious, or what have you.

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SM: Playing into the conspiracy that queer teachers are pedophiles.

AP: Correct. When you’re a queer teacher, you have to be perfect. Any mistake that you make becomes blown up. Whereas somebody who isn’t in the minority group gets the benefit of the doubt, that doesn’t exist when you’re queer as a teacher. It just gets stripped from you so fast. Every conversation about queer teachers has this weird undertone of, well, you’re in it for the wrong reasons. I just want to help kids. Like that’s the most innocent and most like, I don’t know, most moral—in my opinion anyways—most moral possible motivations in the world is I want to help the next generation have a better time than I did. I want kids, like me, who suffered in school, like me, to not have to suffer. So then the mental health piece of that is that you have to carry the weight of that constantly. It’s not something you can put down. It’s not like I come home and I’m like, wow, I don’t have to worry about my gay kids anymore. They’re not fine. Now they’re in worse places. Cause at least when they’re in my classroom, I know they’re safe. I know for a fact, some of them aren’t safe when they go home, and I can’t do anything about that.

SM: I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I wanna go back to PragerU. Just for the people watching this who don’t know, PragerU’s videos and lesson plans are approved as supplemental educational resources in at least eight states. Some key points about what they’ve done with LGBTQ issues: They released a 21-minute film called Detrans, which promotes the idea that gender-affirming care is dangerous, and the film and the campaign faced strong criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups. The human rights campaign called the content “hate-filled propaganda.” You, Daniel, said that it was unbelievable when we mentioned PragerU in some of the schools. Tell us more about why you said that.

DG: I’m just astonished. I’ve never ever seen that. They’re not a university. They call themselves Prager University. They’re not, it’s a YouTube channel. And a lot of it’s inaccurate, historically or otherwise. I can’t believe that they would allow that.

SM: How frustrating is it for you as a teacher when you’re like, this is historically inaccurate, this is coming after marginalized groups, and now it’s being implemented in many states where I’m expected or encouraged to teach this?

AH: I’m in a very, very lucky position to be in New York City, while all of the things are happening in the world. Like I know that our chancellor’s regulations in New York City, they supersede whatever’s happening federally. It’s heartbreaking to hear that there’s like stifling that’s happening with that because at the core of a teacher, we’re there to help children. In my building, we have a Christian club that the kids go to. We also have, you know, a Muslim club where the kids who are Muslim, they get to go and speak and be heard and they’re around like-minded children and teachers who share the same values. We have our GSA. We have a African-American studies club. There’s so much diversity within the building. I think a lot of times people speak about teachers, and they think teachers have the ability to indoctrinate children with whatever their stance is. I think that if non-educators took a step into the classroom, they’d realize that teachers are not actually indoctrinating kids with any type of view. In fact, we’re there to teach them how to have, at least in my school, how to have conversations and discussions where you might not agree with a person, but you have to respect where they come from. We’re there to teach respect. We’re there to teach diversity.

SM: And, Alyssa, I know you obviously. I know you’re yourself a devout Christian, right? How do you think the government and school districts are weaponizing Christianity as it relates to curriculums in schools?

AH: My students don’t know my religious beliefs. My students don’t know my political beliefs. That’s not my place. It’s not my place to say—as the role model in the room—it’s not my place to say, “Oh, well I’m a Christian and you guys should be praying every night.” No, now there are discussions where race or sexuality or religion come into play. I allow my students to lead those conversations and those discussions with each other under parameters, like I said, of respect and rapport, and there are going to be different religions in the room. I tell our kids the very first day, implicit bias and explicit bias stops at this door. When you come in and you’re working with your peers, my expectation to you as my students is that you’re able to articulate yourself respectfully. You’re going to have a rapport in this classroom community with people who are different than you are and that is okay. I feel like our world would be a lot better if people kind of stood in the, it’s okay, let them be. Let people be. Let people be Christian, let people be Muslim, let people be gay, let people be straight, let people identify how they want, let them be. The more we understand the concept of “let them be” in this world, I feel the less division there will be.

SM: That was really nice. I do want to talk about our president, Donald Trump. Trump has attacked many different groups, but also teachers. He said that promoting woke gender ideology, which he says teachers are doing in many cases, is nothing less than child abuse. He has said that schools are now almost exclusively teaching kids how to be transgender. When you have a president who’s setting the tone for the country, supposedly, saying rhetoric like this about teachers, what is the effect for you guys on the ground there?

AH: There’s so much division because of the rhetoric that’s coming directly from politicians, and it’s trickling into the classroom. It is heartbreaking to see or have children leave anybody’s classroom for me. The kids are walking out, and you see rejection written on their faces. You see sadness, you see kids who don’t—I’m getting goosebumps. You have kids who are afraid to say something because they don’t want the teacher to get in trouble because they’re afraid of retaliation. That is what you’re seeing.

CP: That’s what I always echo back to my students, is that at this school we’re all important, we’re all valid. So it wouldn’t be nice to exclude somebody because what if it was you?

AP: Everything that we’re trying to do that is good doesn’t matter because it has this perception from this very large crowd, this very loud crowd, of being dangerous. No matter of facts, no matter of truth can get through to them, because they’ve picked their own version of reality that they wish to impose upon all of the rest of us, regardless of what real damage it does.

JEI: It’s wild to me how the “facts don’t care about your feelings” crowd absolutely care about how their feelings might or might not be affected by that.

SM: This has been obviously a heavy conversation in many ways. I want to know though, from you guys as teachers, what’s giving you hope with the next generation?

DG: We were having just a quick conversation about what a stereotype was. One kid started talking about his gay brother, and a girl, you know, she didn’t know what she was saying, but she used a slur by accident. The reaction from the class was pretty overwhelmingly, “Hey, you can’t say that.” I was kind of ready to shut it down and we moved on after that, but I didn’t really need to correct them, I didn’t need to do anything myself. That made me really proud.

CP: I really love students’ rejection of authority. Which also, it makes my life miserable a lot, it makes classroom management very difficult. But I love that they don’t just follow whoever the most powerful person in the room. I love that they question everything. I think that’s really important, and I think they’re so strong-willed, and I think that’s exactly what we need from the next generation.

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MB: Of all these community members that we have, I’ve taught more than one of their kids now. And there are a few that are still, not still, but they’ve been indoctrinated at home for hate. And there’s a few of them. But what I’ve seen more overwhelmingly is a lot of colorblind, a lot of gender blind, it’s like no big deal to them.

SM: Just to underscore for the audience, you’re essentially in the Bible belt, where you’re saying that it’s overwhelmingly no big deal. I mean, that’s another major marker to me of progress.

MB: Yeah, it’s crazy to see the evidence of it. I have a lot of hope.

SM: I do think there’s a lot of parents who might be misinformed about LGBTQ issues and maybe not inherently hateful, but just afraid for their kids. What would your message to those parents be?

AP: If you would just sit in a room with me, and we could have a cup of coffee, and we could get to know each other a little bit, I’m not trying to harm anyone. I get fear. Like fear is real. It’s something that you have to combat. But it’s hard and so like, if you need somebody to hold your hands, I’ll hold your hand. I’m totally here for that. I just wish that when your hand was reaching out, it would not sharpen your claws, right? Put those away. So if, you know, if you come to me and you have an honest question, I’ll hear any kind of… The phrasing doesn’t matter to me. It can be as offensive-sounding. As long as I know that your intention is good, I don’t care if you use the right terms. I want you to know that your child is safe with me and I want you to know that every child in my classroom is safe with me, regardless of what parentage they’re coming from. Regardless of what situation they’re in. When I say my classroom is a safe space, I don’t mean it’s safe just for queer people. I mean that it’s safe for everyone, and that’s what I want those parents to know.

AH: If parents understood that by understanding each other’s identities, we end up building stronger connections, it creates trust within the household, and it builds that bridge between school and home so that we’re supporting every single student in a meaningful way. Not looking at it as we’re standing across from each other, but like we all want the best for your child. So, let’s stand side by side so that we can make sure that that learner, that little light, can actually shine.

JEI: As the parent of four adult children, my youngest turns 18 in a couple of months. They have all become their own unique people. If you have children and you’re sending them to me or anywhere else, they’re going to be who they’re going to be. You can either try to change that and possibly do incredible damage, or you can be supportive and help them figure out how to be safe through that.

SM: I love it.

JEI: And that’s what I’m here for.

SM: Thank you, I think that’s a wonderful place to end. You guys are absolutely fantastic and saints of society to educate the next generation. Caitlin, Daniel, Everett, AJ, Mardy and Alyssa, thank you all so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted today. We learned a lot.

After last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University (UVU), LGBTQ people—and especially trans people—have been targeted with blame and vitriol. Far-right figureheads quickly engaged in unsubstantiated speculation that the shooter was, in Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s words, “a tr*nny, or pro-tr*nny,” and used this to portray trans people as violent and to advocate for “no mercy” in retaliation.

Even after law enforcement confirmed that the shooter was, like more than 90%of mass shooters, a cisgender man, many still used the identity of his partner and roommate—who Utah Governor Spencer Cox has said is “transitioning from male to female”—to blame the shooting on the trans community.

Kirk, who called trans people “an abomination” and referenced Biblical calls for gay people to be killed, was no friend to the LGBTQ community. But while his rhetoric was often hateful, much of the media coverage about him post-death has focused on rehabilitating his image, portraying him as a champion of civil dialogue.

What’s largely been missing from the media narrative is the voices of queer people affected by the tragedy, but also by the subsequent anti-trans rhetoric. We wanted to fill this gap by speaking with five queer students and recent grads from Utah Valley University.

Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Spencer Macnaughton (he/him): Hi, everyone. I’m Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I am here with five students or recent graduates from Utah Valley University. Everyone, thank you so much for being here and for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today. We’re here to talk about something very serious that I think most folks would describe as a tragedy that happened at your current campus or former campus, Utah Valley University, last week. That’s the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So let’s just start by seeing where were you guys when it happened and how did you find out the news?

Lily Nichols (she/they): So I was actually on campus when it happened. So [my friends and I] were sitting in the library together and we heard a noise. We weren’t sure what it was. And then she made a comment that there was people running outside. And we were like, that’s weird. I don’t really know what’s going on. And then about five minutes after that, the library student staff let us know that there was a shooting on campus and didn’t have any other information other than that. So that happened and they basically just told us to run to get out as soon as possible. As we were trying to exit, they shut the library gates on us. So us and a crowd, there was probably like 20 or 30 of us just panicking, not knowing what to do. And we run and we finally find an emergency exit and it won’t open. And it takes this guy like two or three times just pounding into it to get the door open. And what’s scary is that we all thought that we were going to be next. Thank goodness we got out safely. When they released the photos of him, I realized that he was one of the people that I saw right next to me in the crowd of people going down towards the campus.

SM: The perpetrator?

LN: Yeah.

SM: Wow, you remember seeing—

LN: I remember seeing him and all the Ring cameras from the neighborhood that caught footage of him. That was in the neighborhood that my friend and I were walking up towards to get away from campus. So it was a lot needless to say. It’s difficult because I feel a lot of pain for what happened, even though I didn’t agree with a lot of the things that Charlie would vouch for in his beliefs, I still don’t think that the violence that occurred should ever happen to anyone.

SM: That’s an extremely traumatizing situation and experience. What has it been like for you mentally in the past week?

LN: I haven’t left the house. I’m not gonna lie. I was so fearful. I’ve been trying not to interact too much for my mental health, but also try to fight for what’s right in this moment. Because there’s a lot of, I feel, extra harm coming from this, that doesn’t need to happen. And it’s sad because I feel like I’m losing friendships over different opinions on what happened, which is just awful.

SM: Yeah, I think that’s something, that’s a reason I wanted to have this panel too. Because I think there’s been so much rhetoric about queer people and trans people in the aftermath of this shooting. And I think, “How can we have a reasonable conversation about this?”

Simone Goodheart (she/her): Frankly, I’m going to be honest, I am extremely disappointed with how the media has been approaching this. I am somebody who is deeply connected to the community on campus and have worked with them a lot. And there’s a lot of fear going around. Prior to us finding out it was Tyler Robinson, they speculated about so many trans people that existed on campus. There was even a tweet I found where it had 1500 likes and it was trying to connect me to the instance.

SM: You?

SG: Yeah.

SM: How so? What were they saying?

SG: Uh, basically the entire idea. They tried to just connect any trans people, especially anybody connected to the Queer Student Alliance spectrum. It was just random.

Danny Brown (he/him): Just a witchhunt.

SG: Yeah. Looking for anybody whatsoever. And they connected quite a few of my friends, tried to connect quite a few of my friends to it. On my Instagram the next day, I looked at the metrics. I had over 2,000 people who were just stalking my profile. Afterwards, like frankly put, there has been just any cause whatsoever they’ve been trying to connect trans people to.

SM: And who’s they? Who’s they, when you say “they” Simone, who are you talking about?

SG: I would say just speculators online and or just right leaning individuals, but also like it does not help that Spencer Cox has been very cavalier with the fact that Tyler’s partner somehow connects to the trans community. The fact that that individual is connecting and giving information to the FBI, and they decide to still share that information? Highly irresponsible. But there’s also just been other conversations about how else we can connect to a trans-like community. The idea of, “Well, was the shooter trans?” We quickly find out not. Then we find out Steven Crowder got information from the ATF, which turned out to be false, that it had trans messages on the bullets. Turned out to be false. And then we just kept [being] given information about some random connection to the trans community and it’s been really irresponsible and frankly it’s putting people’s life in danger.

SM: Take me inside your mind as somebody who’s trying to recover from essentially a traumatic event that happened on your campus or former campus, and then at the same time you’re essentially having the finger pointed at you just because of your identity and getting trolled online. Like, what does that do to you mentally?

SG: It does a lot. I’m a fairly, like, apparent trans person in the community who has faced a little bit of this before. But like, this is my university. This is my community. And my community is hurt. And then to see people connecting me to a horrific act of violence? It breaks you. I started to spiral. I was having a very rough evening and I just had to make sure I reached out to everybody else I found who was speculated to be connected, and it was just devastating talking to them. I’m going to be honest, I’m still afraid for my safety on campus and in this community.

SM: Yeah, I understand that. Zoe, go ahead.

Zoe Allgaier (she/they): I agree, I think it’s really disappointing to see the entire media apparatus around this be very quick to blame somebody, and that usually happens to be trans people in this kind of situation, or at least with this one. It’s disappointing to see that news outlets will go for content instead of actual facts. They just need to put something out and they need to put it out immediately, and so it makes them quick to blame people who aren’t actually involved. And it’s really disappointing that we get the front end of that a lot of the time. Like Simone was saying about Governor Cox, too, it’s really disturbing to see him associate trans people with an act like this. It feels a lot like association is the point. And that’s something that’s really disturbing, I think, right now, at this moment in time for me, at least.

SM: Explain why, because I think some people would argue that, you know, saying that the person was, you know male transitioning to female, maybe that’s important information to get out to the public because Charlie Kirk had so much animus toward trans people. Right?

ZA: Right.

SM: But why do you think it’s important for him not to say that?

ZA: It doesn’t seem very relevant, at least to me. I think someone like Governor Cox is very quick to blame “leftist ideology” without really defining what that term is. [He’s] very quick to blame that and that is associated with trans people. And whether that’s true or not, people then associate trans people with horrific events like this and I think that makes it easier to dehumanize us and it’s really hard to see and that’s really made me feel afraid right now.

SM: Well, and I guess it’s also, there’s probably a billion things that he could have released about that roommate.

ZA: Yeah.

SM: More about their gender identity kind of thing.

ZA: Right. And I haven’t seen any verifiable evidence about this person’s identity. It’s all speculation.

Sophie Nicholson (she/her): Or even like the relationship to the shooter. It’s like, they were roommates, and that’s basically all we know. It seems like they’re cooperating with the FBI. Which I don’t know, in that case, if it is a trans person, then that person’s kind of like a hero in this story, right?

SM: I want to give you guys a few more facts just so you know about how the media has covered this and then get you guys to respond a little bit more to that. So obviously in the last week, there’s just been a flurry of headlines. The media has covered this almost 24 hours of the day. Lots of think pieces that have posthumously characterized Kirk as a champion of civil dialogue and a hero to young men, downplaying persistent and severe bigotry throughout his career. Particularly towards LGBTQ people, specifically trans people. And then another point is that the day after the shooting, The Wall Street Journal uncritically published a now de-confirmed claim that the shooter’s bullets were engraved with so-called transgender ideology, spreading it to numerous other outletsbefore a too little too late update on the claims’ unverified nature. What do you guys think about that as queer people who are there in Utah, near the scene of the crime?

LN: The biggest emotions that I’ve felt the past few days have been fear and anxiety. And not only for what could happen when we go back to school. If our community is being targeted, who’s to say that this [won’t] inspire somebody to come and hurt someone at our school? Because there have been thousands of comments that I have seen on Twitter, on Instagram, everywhere, of hateful people targeting these groups that had nothing to do with this tragic event.

DB: Seeing Charlie Kirk praised as an activist, essentially an activist for regression? It’s really hard to watch people you go to school with, your friends and family post things saying like, “RIP Charlie Kirk, he’ll be missed, we lost a good one.” Good for what? You can mourn the loss of a person, but what do you actually like that he did?

SM: How do you reconcile the fact that a murder is obviously tragic but that Charlie Kirk is being presented in many ways as a martyr right now of free speech but at the same time he said some vile things about the LGBTQ community? And let me just list a few. Kirk has called trans people “a throbbing middle finger to God” and “an abomination.” He said we need to have “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming care clinic doctor” and that “these doctors need to be put in prison quickly.” And he said many other references to scripture, where, for example, “Thou shalt lay with another man, shall be stoned to death.” So these are just a few. These are obviously just abhorrent and threatening and disgusting. I think we can all agree [on] that. But then at the same time, he was murdered. And now the media and a lot of this world is seeing him as this martyr. As queer people, as trans people, how do you reconcile all that in your brain?

ZA: What’s helped for me, at least, is to just hold on to my empathy, honestly. I think even if he didn’t believe in empathy, even if that is a thing that he said. I do, and I still feel bad for his wife and his children and everyone who was affected. And I feel bad that he was a victim to the way that we have the internet, the way that online politics works these days. I think that he was beholden to that and that’s disappointing. I think even though I hate so many things that he said about me and my community, I still think it’s important to unify and present actual solutions as a community. I think that’s what the queer community is good at doing.

SG: I’m afraid of having this conversation right now to a degree.

SN: Yeah, me too. I told my mom and she was like, you got to be careful.

SM: Yeah.

SG: I think it’s important to allow people to grieve and to go through that process, but it’s also important to acknowledge all the nuances, the fact that he did not like trans people. Like that’s just a fact. And that means that like, I’m not going to be a fan of him. That’s just how it goes. But a lot of people will get attacked on their politics for that. So I guess it’s just really hard to navigate.

DB: That’s how they’re honoring his death. This free speech absolutist. They’re silencing people. It’s this double standard of who bad things are allowed to happen to. Who’s allowed to have free speech. Who’s not. Who’s allowed to face gun violence and who’s not. It’s this package of free speech freedom, but it’s not free speech and freedom for everybody. It’s free speech and freedom for those I agree with. And anybody else, I’m just going to tear down.

SM: And even what you were saying, Simone, earlier about having 2,000 people having viewed your profile earlier and you have these keyboard warriors and everything like that, how bad did these messages get? I’m curious as you’re trying to manage your own emotions after what happened on your campus.

SG: I would say a few of them were asking me to share my school schedule, which thankfully I’m not a student right now. But like damn, if that was the case? A few of them just make awful comments about my appearance, who I am as a person. Basically they just wanted to make sense [of it], but also they wanted to get their outrage out. Because yeah, somebody they cared for died. They are going through the grieving process and like there is outrage and frustration but they were misdirected and misconnected and just utilized by awful algorithms that try to boost the most amount of outrage possible in order to encourage engagement.

SM: Zoe, you were talking so much about empathy earlier, but at the same time, is there not anger, frustrations, fear, like as a trans woman in this space right now where everything seems to be coming on this tiny percentage of the population and you’re part of it? I would be really scared, I feel like, as well. I mean…

ZA: Yeah, I am. Being a trans person in a very red state like Utah feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. There is a lot of anger and there is a lot of rage that I feel, but I just, I do what I can to get that out in healthy ways, I guess. And luckily I’m able to afford therapy and things like that, but it’s hard. It’s hard to manage, for sure. But it’s important to manage at the same time, especially right now. I think our community is really under the spotlight in a lot of negative ways.

SM: I mean, and the trans community has effectively been bullied from the top of this country, from the president. I mean we can give some facts. Donald Trump spent $215 million on anti-trans ads during the election, five times more than ads he spent on the economy. He said throughout his campaign that we need to quote, get rid of “transgender insanity.” So I mean what do you guys think about how politicians have stoked a fire around this narrative? That trans people are more likely to be perpetrators of mass shootings, which is absolutely not true per the statistics. This false narrative that came out of thin air, it’s the definition of bullying isn’t it?

LN: It’s fear-mongering. I feel like it’s a form of another kind of witch hunt and they do this to get the media off their back. Whatever bad stuff that they’re doing is being ignored and they’re still on their high pedestal and they still look like they’re who is in control and who should be leading.

SM: That’s so true. It’s a distraction, isn’t it?

ZA: I think this whole thing is a big example.

DB: Yeah, it’s such a convenient distraction from the Epstein list, from everything else they’re messing up about the country. It’s not for nothing to stoke this fire of trans panic of putting Charlie Kirk on this pedestal. It is so convenient for every Donald Trump-supporting Republican to be able to not have to speak on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein right now.

SM: I think it makes sense that the news cycle was a lot about Charlie Kirk. But to Lily, your point about the distraction, a lot of the news cycle is now focusing on trans people. It’s like, why? Why are they part of this?

LN: But you see it all throughout history. Right now [it’s] trans people and it’s not fair because they’re a community that just want their rights, their right to be a human and to just to feel loved and to feel happy and themselves in their body and their soul and literally just want their own rights. It’s just so upsetting because it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up logically, but people believe it, and that’s what’s so silly.

SM: How can the media do better? How can they do better, and me? It could be me, you know? I’m the editor of this publication. How can we do this better?

SG: We need to slow down the 24-hour news day. We don’t need news 24-7. We need accurate, consistent news. My second thing, ethics. Like, especially in this last week, because of their interest to be so vast, and they’re like trying to connect it to a trans person based off of false information. They did not consider [ethics]. The fact that we’re not slowing down and thinking about the ramifications of what’s being said and how factual it is. The important part about the news is giving factual, accurate information as quickly, but as ethically as possible.

ZA: I also would like to see a focus on actual, tangible solutions. I think the events of last week are a great example of how we can hopefully all rally behind gun reform, which would make sense. Gun violence doesn’t care about your political party. It’s a profound way to recognize that. But I think a lot of media outlets are going to go towards identity politics instead. Which there is no tangible legislative solution for any of that. So I would like to see more of a focus on actual legislative action.

SM: My colleague, who’s a young trans woman herself, she is writing the newsletter for us this week. And I think the working headline we have is “trans lives are on the line” or “lives are on the line, the media must do better.” Do you think that’s hyperbolic or do you guys agree that lives are on the line in this case for the trans [community]?

DB: I think it’s literally not. Like Simone was telling us very specifically about ways she was affected and is far from the only one.

ZA: Agreed. Yeah, I think it’s a very literal and factual statement to make these days.

SM: Are there other solution oriented ideas you guys have to tone down the rhetoric in this country? Cause it just feels like it’s not simmering, it’s boiling.

SN: Throughout history when an event like this happens, usually what’s supposed to happen is that politicians and people in power are supposed to talk about how we need to come together and stand together as a country against stuff like this. You know, like 9/11 happened and people felt community with each other with random people on the street, right? I feel like, when this happened, it just felt like everything got more divided and more polarized.

SM: How do we become unified? It’s almost, it really does feel impossible in many ways, doesn’t it?

SN: I feel like it doesn’t help when top officials and even up to the president are saying that this is all being done by evil leftists. You don’t say something like that after a tragedy. You say, “This was a tragedy and everyone, the whole nation is in shock, and we should all come together in that shock.”

SG: I would like to add that we need to talk to each other more. I think that’s the corny answer that everybody has been given.

SN: Mm-hmm.

SG: But it’s true. The fact that everybody gets their information about what a trans person is from their echo chamber online puts us in more awful positions. The best way to do this and the best way to destroy the divisiveness is to talk to each other, talk to your neighbor, talk to somebody who may actually disagree with you. And like, yeah, it sucks sometimes to have somebody who disagrees with whether or not I am who I say I am, but if they see me as a human, in the long-term, that’s gonna remove the divisiveness and we’re gonna have actual fruitful conversations instead of people just telling me what I am and ignoring what I say I am.

SM: I think it’s pretty amazing you can say that after the week you’ve had, Simone. That’s, it takes a really good person to be able to say that.

LN: I think that we need to hear more from our representatives. Less of “it’s their fault,” “it’s the red’s fault,” “it’s the blue’s fault.” Back and fourth, that’s where the divide comes, is from having these distinctive parties that that’s all we become focused on rather than coming together, whatever, kumbaya. But that’s who we’re supposed to be. We all live in this country. We all are supposed to have rights within this country. So yes, let’s get along. And like Simone said, talk to each other.

SM: What are you guys doing right now to heal and to get through this?

SN: Watching X-Men movies.

ZA: Same! I was just watching all of those, they’re so good. I write a lot, when Trump got elected, I’ve noticed that journaling has been a really helpful outlet for me. I’ve also had to take some time off work. It’s been hard not to dissociate through all of this. Honestly, it’s really hard and it’s really traumatic for everybody involved.

SM: Simone, how about you? You’ve, like we’ve said, had a week.

SG: For me, and anybody who knows me, knows that this is my go-to answer for everything. It’s engaging in community. It is easy to feel like you’re alone in these instances. And I really think that by engaging in a community at any level you can, it helps make it so much better to process and go through.

SM: I know from my team that it was extremely hard to find LGBTQ people who were willing to talk, right? Why did you want to participate in this panel at this moment? And how can we have more conversations like this moving forward?

DB: I feel like it’s because I’m in a situation where I can. We live in Utah. We all know somebody who has maybe gotten kicked out of their house for being gay. I have a family who didn’t kick me out for being gay and that’s a luxury here. Having had a front row seat to just how hard some of my friends’ lives are, it makes it that much more important for me to stand up for them and advocate for them where I can.

SM: It’s a privilege that you’re exercising, right now.

ZA: Same here. I think I’m very lucky to be in a place where I am able to kind of process things and everything that happened with the resources that I have. And I feel like it’s important as queer people to speak up right now. I think it’s important for our voices to be heard, whether that’s in disagreement with all of the misinformation and the right-wing media that is out there, or just to let other queer people know that, hey, your voice can be heard too. And, I think, it’s important to document that and share that with people. And I feel a responsibility there as a trans woman to try and build community and try and make my voice heard any way that I can if it’s gonna be beneficial.

LN: When I got on social media, I saw a lot of my friends, unfortunately, a lot of them are celebrating and saying some heinous things. And I get it. I understand having anger and feeling like this person hated you and hated your community. But for somebody that like, had to experience something extremely traumatic at the expense of what you think is a win. It’s just, it’s not okay. And it just seems so hypocritical that you want to fight for our rights but not the rights of everybody. And it just got me really not only upset at the traumatic event that happened, but the political discourse that was now happening with it. So I started speaking out a lot on social media with my friend groups and my family. And so, because I kind of, I felt like it was my outlet. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing is to work through it is to talk about it. And to, to open people’s minds to empathy, which is crazy. But, you know, a lot of people don’t have it in their hearts right now. Um, and… Somebody has to speak on it. Like you said, we’ve had a really great conversation. And it has been productive. And there needs to be more conversations out there like this.

SM: Simone, do you want to finish us off?

SG: I have gone through a lot on this campus and university. I care about my community. I love my community, my community has helped me find who I was and has helped me get through some of the darkest times I’ve ever been through. And it’s important to me to elevate my community’s voice as far as I can, especially when they’re in their dark times right now too.

SM: Powerful. I think that’s an amazing, powerful place to end this on. This was a very powerful and productive and important conversation to have right now. I’m really grateful to you for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today, so thank you.

Additional reporting by: Emma Paidra, Nandika Chatterjee and Hope Pisoni