Molly Sprayregen

Members of a culture-warring Florida school district spent a contentious eight-and-a-half hours at a school board meeting expressing their exasperation with the divisiveness plaguing the schools.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, topics at the meeting included book bans, LGBTQ+ rights, and the “overall direction of the … district and its closely divided board.”

Many speakers (there were over 100) denounced the right-wing propaganda claiming teachers are indoctrinating children to be LGBTQ+. 

“No one is teaching your kids to be gay!” said former math teacher Alyssa Marano, who recently resigned from the Hernando school district. “Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally don’t have time to teach your kids to be gay.” 

The district gained notoriety in May when the Florida Department of Education began investigating a Hernando fifth-grade teacher, Jenna Barbee, for showing her class the Disney movie Strange World, which contains a scene where one of the male characters says he has a crush on a boy. Barbee has since resigned. 

But Barbee is just the beginning. About 50 teachers are reportedly planning to resign due to the school’s hostile environment.

At the board meeting, teacher Daniel Scott decried the “draconian working conditions that are causing many such as myself to abandon this honored career.” 

“I don’t feel that I can adequately provide a safe environment for my students anymore,” Scott said. 

Students and parents also spoke, with one saying the school’s “war on woke” is actually a war on the students’ futures. 

Amelie Howell, a sophomore in high school, held a sign that said “Education is not indoctrination” and told the board, “It feels like a lot of people are speaking for us. Nobody is asking what we want.” 

According to the Times, meeting attendees also included Proud Boys and members of the anti-LGBTQ+ organization Moms for Liberty. 

As part of his own war on so-called “woke” culture, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been helping Moms for Liberty members get elected to local Florida school boards. 

Shannon Rodriguez, a Hernando board member who was endorsed by Moms for Liberty, is the one who reported Barbee for showing the Disney film. 

Both Rodriguez and fellow Board member Mark Johnson – whose campaign was focused on opposing critical race theory – have caused controversy in the district after campaigning to remove Superintendent John Stratton, whom they have accused of supporting “indoctrination.”

Stratton survived the vote of no confidence, with one board member, Susan Duval, saying you “could never find a better superintendent.” 

Meetings like this are the product of a Florida culture war continually stoked by DeSantis, who recently announced his campaign for President. 

Beginning with the 2022 passage of the Don’t Say Gay law – which prohibits class instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade – DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature have devoted their tenure to demonizing LGBTQ+ people and making schools less safe for LGBTQ+ students.

DeSantis and the Florida GOP have been so hostile to the LGBTQ+ community that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) – the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization – joined Equality Florida to issue a travel advisory for the state.

On May 17, DeSantis signed a slate of laws targeting LGBTQ+ people, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, restrictions on such care for adults, a ban on all-ages drag shows, and an anti-trans bathroom bill.

DeSantis has gone to war with Disney over its opposition to the Don’t Say Gay law, has launched numerous blindsides attacking “woke indoctrination” in schools, and has taken control of the state’s education system with handpicked administrators and the power of the bully pulpit. His staff has regularly smeared LGBTQ+ people and allies on social media with vile slurs and insinuations of sexual abuse.

The Don’t Say Gay law – which has been expanded to all grades – has led to the banning of LGBTQ+ books in schools and the forced outing of students to their parents by school administrators. 

In 2021, DeSantis signed a bill banning trans students from participating in school sports.

DeSantis has ranted against “woke gender ideology” and once claimed, “In the state of Florida, we are not going to allow them to inject transgenderism into kindergarten.”

LGBTQ+ students in Florida are so scared of repercussions that many have refused to speak with LGBTQ Nation about their experiences. A non-LGBTQ+ student told us that terrified queer students are learning to “shut up and keep their head low.”

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) has signed an education bill that includes several anti-LGBTQ+ policies. 

S.F. 496 bans instruction on LGBTQ+ identities through sixth grade and requires schools to out trans youth to their parents. It also bans all books containing sex acts from school classrooms and libraries, which will undoubtedly lead to the banning of several LGBTQ+ books. 

And despite the fact that Iowa has already banned gender-affirming care for trans youth, the bill explicitly establishes that parents and guardians have “the fundamental, constitutionally protected right, to make decisions affecting [their] child, including decisions related to the minor child’s medical care….” 

The section clarifies that it does not authorize parents and guardians to “engage in conduct that is unlawful,” and as such, parents of trans youth still do not have the right to seek gender-affirming care for their kids.

Democrats and LGBTQ+ rights groups have blasted the bill. 

“We need all Iowa trans kids to know, LGBTQ kids to know, that you belong here,” House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst (D), reportedly said as the legislative session came to a close.

After Reynold’s signed the bill, the Iowa Senate Democrats tweeted that the law seeks to “ban books and marginalize kids just because they’re different.” 

“Censorship and singling out LGBTQ Iowans is wrong for kids, and wrong for our state,” the tweet concluded. 

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Courtney Reyes, the executive director of One Iowa, said in a statement that the law “will harm an already vulnerable group of children and will benefit no one.” 

The bill was part of a slate of education bills signed by Reynolds last week. In a statement, she said the state has “secured transformational education reform that puts parents in the driver’s seat, eliminates burdensome regulations on public schools, provides flexibility to raise teacher salaries, and empowers teachers to prepare our kids for their future.” 

“Education is the great equalizer and everyone involved – parents, educators, our children – deserves an environment where they can thrive,” she said. 

Reynolds has made her anti-trans views a cornerstone of her tenure. She has also made “parental control” a centerpiece of her public messaging, claiming a far-left “woke” agenda is threatening the health and well-being of the state’s children.

While campaigning for reelection in 2022, she aired a TV spot highlighting what she called her values of faith, freedom, and hard work. 

“Here in Iowa,” she declared, “we know right from wrong, boys from girls.”

At the end of March this year, Reynolds signed two bills targeting trans youth. One forbids minors from accessing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy and forces trans teens currently receiving gender-affirming care to de-transition. It also threatens the professional licenses of any medical practitioners who provide such care. Studies show that gender-affirming care is safe, reversible, and essential to trans people’s overall well-being.

The other prohibits people from using school restrooms that don’t correspond with the gender a person was assigned at birth. 

Last year, Reynolds also signed an anti-trans sports ban.

At just 54 years old, Rue Landau is already a living, breathing piece of LGBTQ+ history. 

As a member of ACT UP during the height of the AIDS epidemic, she fought on the frontlines for better access to health care for people with HIV and AIDS. In 2014, while serving as executive director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, Landau and her wife, Kerry, became the first same-sex couple in Pennsylvania to get a marriage license. 

The leaders did not acknowledge why Sims wasn’t their top choice. 

Now, Landau could further embed herself in the fabric of Pennsylvania’s LGBTQ+ history as she seeks to become the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Philadelphia City Council.

“I’ve been working my whole career, fighting for social justice and equity,” Landau, a Democrat, told LGBTQ Nation. “All of the work I’ve done has naturally led up to this point. We’re facing tremendous challenges here in the city of Philadelphia, and I believe that I have the vision, the track record, and the relationships to get things done.” 

Landau began her career as a civil rights attorney at Community Legal Services, where she defended low-income renters against evictions. She then spent 12 years directing Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations as well as the Fair Housing Commission, where she focused on advancing the city’s civil rights laws. 

During her tenure, she helped create laws to advance wage equity, create reasonable accommodations for pregnant people, and strengthen anti-discrimination protections, including specifically for LGBTQ+ people. 

Landau said her experiences working for the city taught her the importance of having an LGBTQ+ leader who is also trusted by other communities. 

“It enabled me to be able to build coalitions across communities that did not happen before… To me, creating coalitions with our LGBTQ community and other communities throughout Philadelphia is going to make us all stronger and safer and make for a stronger city, and that is how we will build Philadelphia back post-pandemic and create the brighter better Philadelphia that we need.”

If elected to City Council, Landau’s priorities would be public safety (namely, tackling the gun violence epidemic), neighborhood investment, and affordable housing. 

“I believe with more investments in our neighborhoods, in our schools, our rec centers, our libraries, our people, our cleaning and greening spaces, that’s the first start to helping with issues of public safety,” she said. 

“And I want to increase community policing, increase de-escalation tactics, get far more mobile health crisis units on the street and active, and connected to all of that is the fact that we are the poorest large city in America. We must tackle our poverty crisis in order for people to feel hope and to thrive. For me, one of the big measures there is affordable housing.” 

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Landau certainly has her work cut out for her in the race. More than 20 candidates are running in the May 16 Democratic primary for the council’s seven available at-large seats.

Landau said it would be “incredible” to be the council’s first out member, but she also acknowledged the closeted leaders – like the late John C. Anderson – who have served before her. 

“I stand on the shoulders of their greatness,” she said, adding that her victory “would mean that we finally had a seat at the table.” 

“It would mean that our community didn’t just have advisory roles for legislation and policy, but that we really had a hand in crafting it with a seat at the table. It would also mean that I was a role model to other people. And as a parent, I can tell you that our young people need role models.” 

Landau said Philadelphia is more or less a safe space for LGBTQ+ people, but that areas near the city – like Bucks County – have become caught up in the right-wing’s relentless vendetta against LGBTQ+ people. 

Last year, the ACLU issued a 72-page complaint accusing Bucks County’s Central Bucks School District – one of the state’s largest – of creating a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students. The complaint alleged that the district had propagated the removal of Pride flags, instructed teachers not to honor a student’s pronouns, and advocated for censorship of books with LGBTQ+ themes. 

If elected, Landau vowed to reach across city lines to speak up for the surrounding LGBTQ+ community. 

“It’s wonderful if we can maintain our safe borders here in Philadelphia,” Landau said. “But I think that we need to be the strongest voice in the state. We often are, but [we need to be] now more than ever… And we need to reach over to our counties and across the state and help them lift up all of their LGBTQ communities as well, to reach out to their elected officials, and to make sure that those areas remain safe for our communities as well.”

Above all else, Landau wants voters to see her as a coalition builder. 

“I’ve been a fighter for social justice and equity my entire career… I bring people together. I have resolved conflicts. I’m a coalition builder, and I am working to make stronger communities and a stronger Philadelphia.”

A Christian woman is suing the state of Oregon for denying her application to foster and adopt children after she said she would not affirm any LGBTQ+ kids placed in her home.

Jessica Bates, a widow and a mother of five, alleges that the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) discriminated against her religion and violated her right to free speech by requiring that foster parents affirm LGBTQ+ youth. 

The most anti-LGBTQ+ gay person in Congress joined the right’s Two Minute Hate of the trans influencer.

The lawsuit says that Bates “alerted the Department that she will gladly love and accept any child for who they are, but she cannot say or do anything against her Christian faith” and that when she “stood her ground,” her application was rejected. 

It explained Bates’s Christian faith is what kept her going after her husband was killed in a brutal car crash in 2017. It added that Bates was inspired to apply to foster/adopt children after hearing about a man who did so while listening to a Christian broadcast. 

“Jessica felt as though God was speaking to her,” it said. She felt a calling to help kids in need – but only if they weren’t LGBTQ+. 

The lawsuit also lays out her anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs, explaining that she feels “a person cannot choose his or her gender”; that “a person should not go by pronouns that contradict or obscure their biological sex”; and that “marriage is the life-long union of one man and one woman.” 

The suit called DHS’s acceptance policy “an ideological litmus test” that only allows people with “correct” views to adopt. 

“A family that hunts need not give up meat eating because some children are vegans,” it continued. “And Jews need not accommodate foreign gods because some children desire a home with a Hindu shrine. In the end, the only group excluded from the process up front are those with religious beliefs like Jessica’s. Conservative Christians need not apply.”

The suit was filed on behalf of Bates by the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate group. 

ADF has joined with like-minded organizations in Europe in support of the forced sterilization of transgender individuals and has represented numerous anti-LGBTQ+ plaintiffs in pivotal legal battles for LGBTQ+ rights. The organization has also been a large force behind the anti-abortion movement.