A crowd of counter-protestors formed a human shield around a city centre library in Ireland, enabling it to remain open despite a right-wing rally taking place on the street outside.
Cork City Library has been the focus of right-wing anger ire for months, with people harassing library staff in an attempt to get LGBTQ+ books removed from its shelves.
On Saturday (2 September), about 300 people turned out in support of the library and its staff, and in opposition to the Ireland Says No rally, which was organised by conservative groups.
The city council was previously forced to shut the library during another demonstration, out of fear for the safety of staff.
During the course of the counter demonstration, groups of people, including from Cork Says No To Racism and Cork Rebels For Peace, waved Pride flags, held signs and sang songs.
Speaking to CorkBeo, Sinn Féin councillor Mick Nugent said: “For me, it’s primarily in support of library workers in terms of what they’ve had to put up with over the past number of months. The library is open today, which is good, business as usual.”
“It’s about equality, it’s about liberty, it’s about fraternity and it’s about diversity. We’re supporting all communities that decided to make Cork their home.”
‘It’s important to take a stand’
Two women, who said they were members of the Irish Writers Union, told CorkBeo they were part of the counter-protest because the issue of library attacks is affecting the rest of the country.
“We travelled down because this is not just affecting Cork, there have been attacks like this on libraries across Ireland and it’s important to take a stand, support the workers who are being targeted and support the right of libraries to have the right to choose the books they want to have,” they said.
One person was arrested, the Garda Síochána (the Irish police force) confirmed, following the demonstrations.
“Gardaí in Anglesea Street attended the scene of a protest at a premises in Cork city. During the course of the protest, one male [in his] late twenties was arrested under the Public Order Act 1994 and was dealt with accordingly,” a police spokesperson told The Echo.
“No further incidents arose and the group dispersed peacefully.”
An LGBTQ+ group was banned from participating in an Iowa town’s Labor Day parade, reportedly at the behest of the mayor.
On Thursday, just days before the parade in Essex, Iowa, members of Shenandoah Pride say they received an email from Mayor Calvin Kinney on behalf of the city.
“Out of concern for the safety of the public and that of Essex Labor Day parade participants, the City of Essex has determined not to allow parade participants geared toward the promotion of, or opposition to, the politically charged topic of gender and/or sexual identification/orientation,” the email read. “This parade will not be used for and will not allow sexual identification or sexual orientation agendas for, or against, to be promoted.”
Essex City Council Member Heather Thornton told the Associated Press that the decision was made by Kinney, despite the fact that the parade’s organizers had unanimously approved Shenandoah Pride’s participation. Thornton said she disagreed with the decision but was told that the mayor had the authority to ban the group without a city council vote.
According to KETV, the city said it had received threats from a group opposing Shenandoah Pride’s participation in the parade. But the group’s co-founder Jessa Bears said that Shenandoah Pride had not received any threats directly. Thornton told the Associated Pressthat she was unaware of any threats.
Bears told KETV that she believes the decision to ban Shenandoah Pride came in response to their plan to have local drag performer Cherry Peaks ride in a convertible in the parade with the group.
On Saturday, the ACLU of Iowa sent a letter to Kinney and City Attorney Mahlon Sorensen urging the city to allow Shenandoah Pride to participate in Monday’s parade, calling the group’s exclusion a violation of the First Amendment.
Kinney has not commented publicly about the decision.
Bears told the AP that Shenandoah Pride wanted to march in the parade to “let people know there is a queer community in southwest Iowa that they can be a part of.”
“It’s just really about visibility and being in the community and showing, you know, we work and we go to school with everybody in the community, and just letting everyone know that we’re here,” Bears told KETV.
“I think the misconception is that, you know, it’s these gay people from these cities,” said Ryan Fuller, who performs in drag as Cherry Peaks. “We’re not from the city. We live less than 10 miles away from the town.”
While Shenandoah Pride ultimately did not march in the parade, they did set up a booth at the town’s Labor Day festival and gathered for the parade after members of the community reached out to invite the group to watch from their yards. Other groups in the parade carried Pride flags in solidarity with the group.
Despite feeling “shocked and angry,” Bears told the AP that the ban had actually done more for the group’s visibility than marching in the parade would have.
At the same time, KMTV reports that following coverage of the ban, Fuller received a death threat.
An activist detained in Hong Kong partially won his final appeal Tuesday seeking recognition for same-sex marriage registered overseas, in a landmark court ruling that is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
Jimmy Sham, a prominent pro-democracy activist during 2019 anti-government protests, married his husband in New York 10 years ago. Sham first asked for a judicial review in 2018 arguing that Hong Kong’s laws, which don’t recognize foreign same-sex marriage, violate the constitutional right to equality. The lower courts had dismissed his challenges.
Sham has been in custody after being charged under a Beijing-imposed national security law following the massive protests. The law has been used to arrest and silence many other pro-democracy activists as part of a crackdown on dissent in the former British colony.
Jimmy Sham has been in custody after being charged under a Beijing-imposed national security law following massive protests. Louise Delmotte / AP
Judges at the city’s top court, by a majority, declared in a written ruling that the government is in violation of its positive obligation to establish an alternative framework for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, such as registered civil partnerships or civil unions. But they unanimously dismissed his appeal on other grounds.
Their ruling will have strong implications for the lives of the LGBTQ+ community and the financial hub’s reputation as an inclusive place to stay and work.
Currently, Hong Kong only recognizes same-sex marriage for certain purposes such as taxation, civil service benefits and dependent visas. Many of the government’s concessions were won through legal challenges in recent years and the city has seen a growing social acceptance toward same-sex marriage.
In a previous hearing, Sham’s lawyer Karon Monaghan argued that the absence of same-sex marriages in Hong Kong sent a message that they’re less worthy of recognition than heterosexual marriages.
Sham is the former convenor of Civil Human Rights Front, which was best known for organizing the annual protest march on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997, for years.
The group also organized some of the biggest political protests that roiled the city in 2019 but was disbanded in 2021 under the shadow of the security law.
After parents in a rural and staunchly conservative Wyoming county joined nationwide pressure on librarians to pull books they considered harmful to youngsters, the local library board obliged with new policies making such books a higher priority for removal — and keeping out of collections.
But that’s not all the library board has done.
Campbell County also withdrew from the American Library Association, in what’s become a movement against the professional organization that has fought against book bans.
This summer, the state libraries in Montana, Missouri and Texas and the local library in Midland, Texas, announced they’re leaving the ALA, with possibly more to come. Right-wing lawmakers in at least nine other states — Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — demand similar action.
Part of the reason is the association’s defense of disputed books, many of which have LGBTQ and racial themes. A tweet by ALA President Emily Drabinski last year in which she called herself a “Marxist lesbian” also has drawn criticism and led to the Montana and Texas state library departures.
“This is the problem with the American Library Association, it has changed from an organization that helped communities and used common sense into one that just promotes a view,” said Dan Kleinman, a blogger and longtime ALA critic.
Widely disputed books over the past couple years include Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir “Gender Queer,” Juno Dawson’s “This Book Is Gay,” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” the ALA points out.
A person readsMaia Kobabe’s graphic memoir “Gender Queer.”Rick Bowmer / AP file
In northeastern Wyoming’s Campbell County, a coal-mining area where former President Donald Trump got 87% of the vote in 2020, library board meetings have been packed and often heated for over two years now.
After a local outcry over a drag queen story hour and an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute library officials over books in the library’s children’s section, a library board with several new members appointed by the County Commission withdrew from the ALA last year.
“We were the first library in nation to do this. And now it has progressed to something to something I couldn’t even have imagined,” library board member Charles Butler said. “And all we were ever worried about was the sexualization of children.”
The nonprofit American Library Association denies having a political agenda, saying it has always been nonpartisan.
“This effort to change what libraries are, or even just take libraries away from communities, I think, is part of a larger effort to diminish the public good, to take away those information resources from individuals and really limit their opportunity to have the kinds of resources that a community hub, like a public library, provides,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
The ALA won’t say how many libraries are members of the group but denied any “mass exodus.”
The troubles come as individual membership in the ALA is down 14% since 2018 to about 49,700, the lowest since 1989, according to figures on the organization’s website. The ALA attributes the decline to suspended library conferences during the pandemic.
While librarians pride themselves about being open to different perspectives and providing access to different kinds of materials, political leaders telling them to part with the ALA runs against that, said Washington University in St. Louis law professor Gregory Magarian.
Magarian has been following Missouri’s departure from the ALA amid a debate over who may take part in local library “story hours” and new state rules that seek to limit youth access to certain books deemed inappropriate for their age.
“When you see state governments kind of replacing that type of control by librarians with greater control by politically motivated, politically ambitious, politically polarized government officials, I think that’s really troubling for the prospects for free access to ideas,” Magarian said.
In Campbell County, recent library policy changes remove the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,” which states: “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.”
Banned books are stacked at an exhibit at the American Library Association’s conference in Chicago, on June 24, 2023.Claire Savage / AP file
The new policy says the library system takes seriously keeping “obscene sexually explicit or graphic materials” out of youth sections and can apply that priority in the routine “weeding” of damaged, unused and out-of-date books.
When library Director Terri Lesley expressed doubts about doing that, the board asked her to resign. After she refused, the board voted 4-1 to fire her.
“If we just start moving books, it is really putting the library staff in a bad position legally,” Lesley said at a library board meeting just before her firing July 28. “This raises First Amendment concerns with no right to appeal or challenge books that have been weeded.”
She singled out MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ+ group, and Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal advocacy group, for working together on the library policy changes, a claim supported by a July 19 post on the MassResistance website.
Lesley won an ALA award last year for “notable contributions to intellectual freedom” and “personal courage in defense of freedom of expression.” She did not return a message seeking comment and Butler and ALA officials declined to comment on her firing.
“People should be running their own libraries based on common sense, community standards and the law,” said Kleinman, the ALA critic and blogger. “And if library directors don’t want to go along with that? Goodbye.”
Kleinman last month launched an alternative to the ALA, the World Library Association, which he said will offer new policy guidelines for libraries.
“We’re going to return things to commonplace, community standards,” Kleinman said.
Butler and Campbell County Library Board Chairwoman Sage Bear, who did not return phone and email messages seeking comment, have joined as “team members” of the World Library Association. Butler said he hoped the new association will eventually offer librarian continuing education that Campbell County can no longer provide through the ALA.
So far, state library associations — private, professional organizations that resemble the American Library Association, but on a state level — are sticking with the American Library Association. Wyoming librarians don’t always see eye-to-eye with the ALA but the Wyoming Library Association has no plans to cut ties, President Conrrado Saldivar said.
Wyoming librarians are being “constantly critiqued” but they — not the ALA — are the ones who control their collections based on community needs, Saldivar added.
“ALA is not telling our library workers, our collection development librarians, you have to have this book in your library collection,” Saldivar said.
Republican Gov. Mark Gordon looks to be on the same page, criticizing as a “media stunt” a recent letter from 13 state lawmakers and Wyoming’s secretary of state asking him to pull the Wyoming State Library from the ALA.
“The letter implies that Wyoming citizens — Wyoming parents — are not capable of deciding how best to govern themselves and need the self-appointed morality police to show them the way,” Gordon said in a statement.
He called for discussion about the ALA’s “organizational drift” but is keeping the Wyoming State Library in the ALA, at least for now. Whether still more states and communities decide to leave remains to be seen amid what Caldwell-Stone described as a new push to question the group’s very existence.
“We have to question whose agenda is served by taking away library service from the people and taking away the liberty to make ones own choices about one’s own reading,” she said. “Because that’s what we’re here for.”
The mother of a teenage boy who died by suicide in California is grieving publicly after his death. She says he was bullied relentlessly by kids who teased him because he was gay.
In the aftermath of her son Salvador’s death, Eunice Rios posted a video on TikTok explaining her grief, San Diego NBC station KNSD reported.
She said that she had hoped to shield her son from the bigotry of the world. Unfortunately, she thinks that the spitefulness of young bullies led to her son taking his life in August.
“I support the gay community, always. Always. Love is love. But as a mom, it was not easy to accept that my son was going to be exposed, go through all these ordeals because the world is so mean,” Rios explained. “My son, he experienced embarrassment, humiliation, pain.”
She told the television station that her son suffered relentless bullying at the hands of cruel classmates at two schools who targeted the teen.
The things that those who tormented her son said to him were too difficult to read, she said.
“I don’t want to know because I don’t want to read the messages, and I will never read the messages because this is the reason I think he took his life,” she stated.
Rios said she contacted the San Diego Unified School District to file a complaint with the agency.
The district did not respond KNSD’s request for comment.
After burying her son, Rios intends to keep his memory alive by continuing to engage in activism. She is determined to make sure that the LGBTQ+ community is treated with respect and dignity in the wake of his tragic death.
If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available to help. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 is for people of all ages and identities. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.
Positive Images’ upcoming QTBIPOC (Queer & Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Hangout is on September 11th from 6-8pm at the PI Community Center (200 Montgomery Drive, Santa Rosa)!
Join us for a Picture Day with Kodak from QT with a Camera Photography, who will be offering free professional affirming portraits of you or you with a friend to keep and use forever
A number of Republican lawmakers in central Florida have warned against the state’s LGBTQ+ Safe Place Initiative and said they are considering “all legislative, legal and executive options available” to prevent it from going ahead.
The city-sponsored program, which is in operation in the town of Mount Dora, gives local business owners the option to display rainbow decals in their windows to inform members of the LGBTQ+ community who feel threatened that they are a ‘safe place’.
“The mission of the Safe Place Initiative is to provide the community with easily accessible safety information and safe places throughout the city they can turn to if they are the victims of an anti-LGBTQ+ or other hate crimes,” reads an explainer of the program on the official City of Mount Dora website.
Mount Dora city council approved the Safe Place Initiative this August, following in the footsteps of other neighbourhoods throughout Orlando and across the US.
A ‘safe places’ initiative in Orlando could be under threat by Republican lawmakers. (Stock photo via Getty)
Other Safe Place Initiatives have been sponsored by the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
That’s why it might have taken some residents by surprise when four Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to Mount Dora officials that they were concerned about the initiative.
According to AP News, lawmakers expressed fears that the optional program might put central Florida “in the crosshairs of potentially detrimental and absolutely unnecessary economic harm.”
The letter reportedly cited recent boycotts of brands like Bud Light and Target as a result of their efforts to support and promote LGBTQ+ inclusion and diversity.
Bud Light came under fire from right-wing consumers after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney uploaded just one social media post sponsored by the beer brand.
Outraged responses ranged from beer boycotts to smashing displays in public to musician Kid Rock filming himself shooting cans of the beer.
Bud Light faced heavy backlash over Dylan Mulvaney’s post. (Natalie Behring/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, US retail giant Target took a sales hit this summer after unveiling its LGBTQ+ Pride-themed collection.
Not only did the brand report a slump in profits but it was forced to remove or hide their displays for the “safety and wellbeing” of their staff members when protests turned violent.
As reports of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks in Orlando – including the devastating vandalism of an LGBTQ+ centre’s murals just last week – increase, this is a time when the city needs safe spaces most.
Reacting to the letter to Mount Dora officials, Democratic Floridian lawmaker Anna Eskamani described it as “the weirdest letter I’ve ever read.”
Sharing a copy of the letter to social media in a post seen by AP News, she wrote: “Let LGBTQ+ (people) exist and stop politicizing everything!
“So much manufactured panic from the right. Meanwhile, families can’t even afford to live in Florida. Focus on that instead.”
On Tuesday, the City of Boston announced it will no longer require applicants for a marriage license to register their sex or gender identity.
It was a day that Boston’s director of policy and strategic initiatives Kimberley Rhoten, who identifies as nonbinary, has “eagerly awaited.
“Unfortunately for people like me, the certificate’s outdated and narrow gender markers were a glaring reminder that our city still had a long way to go in acknowledging our existence,” they said.
At a press conference, Rhoten was presented with the first new marriage license by Boston Registrar Paul Chong, who told them: “Your love makes the world a better place. It makes this city a better place.”
The change is part of a broader effort by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to address gender identity in city services.
“Our fundamental charge in public service is ensuring that our services and opportunities reach everyone, and that starts with affirming and supporting constituents of all identities,” Wu said announcing the change.
“This update to Boston marriage licenses is a huge step in building a City that is truly inclusive, and I’m excited to see how these critical changes for accessibility at City Hall serve Bostonians.”
The new gender awareness initiative outlines a strategy to address how Boston collects gender data, how it’s used, and what city services are impacted by it.
“Right now, we ask residents about gender identity to deliver key services,” an explainer on the city’s website reads. “But when we ask, we often aren’t using language that represents all gender identities and may not even need gender identity to deliver some of these services. We want to understand how to ask about gender identity in an accessible, affirming, and safe way.”
The marriage license update is one result.
According to Rhoten, the change will help to alleviate gender dysphoria among non-binary individuals and spare them from “having to pick from a list of limited, narrow, and delineated options.”
“And for those of us who change and grow, later identifying with a different gender than when we first got married, our marriage certificates no longer constrain us and can now reflect the love we hold without disrespecting who we’ve grown into and our new pronouns,” she said.
Rhoten asserted the new marriage license is “not just a win for the queer community. It’s a win for everyone who believes in the principles of fairness, equality, and equal access to our city’s services. It’s a win for Boston.”
The manager of a Los Angeles restaurant believes a recent wave of crimes against its premises has been motivated by homophobia due to the establishment’s support of the LGBTQ+ community.
Police are currently investigating a series of crimes against the Sawtelle eatery Sorry not Sorry and its staff, including incidents of burglary, and cars outside the restaurant being set on fire.
General manager Brandon Waller is worried that the business’ openly supportive stance on LGBTQ+ rights is causing it to be targeted.
“We had a swastika drawn in marker on the front of our restaurant. We had the word ‘AIDS’ drawn on the pole in front of our restaurant,” Waller told NBC.
During a burlesque show hosted at Sorry not Sorry on 25 August, Waller said that someone poured accelerant onto the hood of three employees’ cars, slashed their tires and set the vehicles ablaze.
‘We can’t let that hold us back. We’re not going anywhere’
One of its bartenders, Logan Elliot, had parked their car behind the restaurant as usual before starting his shift, but later looked outside and saw it on fire. He explained that the fire could have been fatal if it had gone unnoticed much longer.
“I’m like, ‘This is really bad’ because my car is parked next to a cabinet full of propane tanks,” Elliot said.
Despite the series of attacks, Waller said the restaurant would not shut down, hide its support for the LGBTQ+ community or stop queer-related events such as burlesque nights.
Brian Kerekes, a high school statistics teacher in Florida, said he froze like “a deer in headlights” when a student asked him a personal question at the beginning of the school year this month.
He said the student looked around the classroom, saw a small Pride flag, then asked, “Are you gay?”
Kerekes said that his identity is no secret and that he is one of a few out gay teachers in his school. But under a new state law that restricts the instruction of LGBTQ topics, he feared that his answer could somehow be illegal, he said.
“I said something to the effect of, ‘I don’t think I can tell you that,’” Kerekes said. “And she’s like, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘It’s kind of the state law now.’”
Brian Kerekes.Brian Kerekes
Kerekes said the exchange is just one example of the variety of difficult situations that he and his colleagues in Osceola County have had to navigate under Florida’s recently expanded Parental Rights in Education act, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Battles over what content is appropriate for children — in books, history classes, health classes and elsewhere — are dominating school board meetings and state legislatures across the country. In most of these debates, one side portrays LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and transgender-inclusive school policies as inappropriate or harmful for minors, with some conservative activists and elected officials going so far as to describe such content as “grooming,” resurfacing a decades-old moral panic about queer people.
Nowhere has that battle been more pronounced than in Florida, which made national headlines in the spring of 2022 when the state Legislature debated — and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, ultimately signed — the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill. Initially, the measure prohibited “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” DeSantis signed an expanded version of the law in May that prohibits such instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade and restricts health education in sixth through 12th grade.
Seventeen states enacted more than 30 new LGBTQ-related education laws in 2023, which will all be in effect for the 2023-24 school year unless they are blocked in court, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In addition to Florida, five states — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina — enacted restrictions this year on LGBTQ-related instruction in schools. Currently, 11 states have laws censoring discussions of LGBTQ people or issues in schools and several additional states have laws requiring parental notification of LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, according to the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, an LGBTQ research think tank.
Iowa’s prohibition on the instruction of LGBTQ-related topics in kindergarten through sixth grade includes additional provisions that require school libraries to conduct regular reviews to ensure books don’t include sexually explicit material, allow parents to opt their children out of sex education and mandate school staff to immediately inform parents if they believe a child “has expressed a gender identity that is different” than the sex on the child’s birth certificate.
Ten states enacted new laws that bar transgender student athletes from playing on the school sports teams that align with their gender identities, bringing the total to 23 states, according to MAP, with the majority of these state measures applying to both K-12 schools and colleges.
Seven states have new laws that bar schools from requiring teachers (and, in some cases, other students) from using pronouns for students that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. Florida’s expanded Parental Rights in Education act also bars transgender teachers from sharing their pronouns with students.
Five states have enacted laws so far this year that bar trans students and school staff from using school facilities that align with their gender identities, bringing the current total to nine states with such laws, according to MAP.
Florida also enacted a law that prohibits colleges and universities from spending state and federal funds on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The law also restricts courses that could promote “social activism,” such as race and gender studies.
‘Educated, not indoctrinated’
Supporters of restrictions on LGBTQ-related content argue that it is inappropriate for children, and that parents should be allowed to determine their children’s access to such information.
“Parents deserve the first say on when and how certain social topics are introduced to their children,” Iowa state Rep. Skyler Wheeler, the Republican who sponsored the state’s parental rights law, said in March after the bill passed the state House, according to the Des Moines Register.
He added that “parents should be able to send their children to school and trust they are being educated, not indoctrinated,” nearly quoting language used by DeSantis when he signed the original version of Florida’s parental rights law.
DeSantis defended the expansion of the law after signing it in May, saying teachers and students would “never be forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”
“We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago?” DeSantis said of people using pronouns that are different from those associated with their assigned sex. “Now this is something, they’re having third graders declare pronouns. We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida. It’s not happening here.”
Students and educators ‘are under assault’
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, which represents public school teachers and staff, said the laws have created a culture of fear among educators nationwide.
“We are in a moment where our students are under assault, teachers and other educators are under assault, parents are under assault,” said Pringle, who taught middle school science for 31 years. “People are afraid. They’re afraid for their livelihood. They’re afraid for their lives.”
Pringle noted that the teacher shortage is “chronic and growing” across the country because teachers are dealing with unprecedented challenges, including the effects of the pandemic, burnout and low pay.
She pointed to a 2022 NEA survey that found 55% of its members said they were planning on leaving education sooner than they intended because of the pandemic, compared to 37% in 2021. On top of that, she said teachers have told her they feel like the public doesn’t respect their expertise, and the new laws are an example of that.
“That’s at the heart of what’s happening right now, where people who haven’t spent a day in our classrooms are telling us what to teach and how to teach and who to teach,” Pringle said. “We spend our lives trying to create those culturally responsive, inclusive, caring, joyful environments for kids, because we know that’s at the heart of them being able to learn every day.”
Michael Woods, a high school special education teacher in Palm Beach County, Florida, said he has encountered a number of difficult situations under the state’s new law. He has been advising a student for three years who uses a different name and pronouns than those assigned at birth. He said he’ll have to tell that student that he can no longer refer to them that way until they return a state-mandated form signed by their parents.
Michael Woods.Michael Woods
“We’re essentially telling kids, in my opinion, as a gay man, ‘You know what, go back in the closet,’” Woods said. “We’ve taken something as simple as a name that a student calls themselves and made it shameful.”
Lola, a 12-year-old seventh grader in Winter Haven, Florida, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said the state’s new education-related laws have made kids in their school afraid to come out or talk about their identities publicly.
“A lot of students come out to me, because at school I’m openly queer and nonbinary,” Lola said.
They said students have also asked them questions about their family, because they have two moms, and in three cases, Lola said teachers told them they can’t discuss their family on school premises.
Lola, right, with their mother, Tsi.Tsi Smyth
Lola’s discussion with their classmates would not break the law, which specifically mentions instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from school staff. But Kerekes said teachers are avoiding LGBTQ subjects entirely out of fear that something they say or do could be interpreted as illegal or reported by a parent, who could sue the school district under the Parental Rights in Education act.
“I’m just talking about my parents,” Lola said. “Students shouldn’t be getting in trouble for talking about their life just because it’s different from the norm.”
Because of the part of Florida’s law that bars students from using bathrooms that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth, Lola said they have to walk to the nurse’s office, which is in a separate building, to use a unisex bathroom.
Lola said there are other trans kids at school who are too shy to ask to use a different bathroom, so they’ll avoid using the bathroom for the entire school day.
Advocates say legislation that removes LGBTQ-inclusive books and curricula or allows teachers to use the wrong pronouns for students harms their mental health, while supportive policies do the opposite.
Research released Thursday by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that LGBTQ middle and high school students who had access to one of four school-related protective factors — gender-neutral bathrooms, LGBTQ-inclusive history lessons, a gender-sexuality alliance (GSA) club or teachers that respect their pronouns — had 26% lower odds of attempting suicide.
In Osceola County, Kerekes said he has inherited his school’s GSA club from a teacher who left last year. Some teachers in Florida, including Woods, have stopped hosting club meetings temporarily because they’re not sure how the new law affects them, but Kerekes said he will continue his school’s and hopes to have the first meeting this week.
