Photo: flickr / public domainA gay teen who was driven to attempt suicide after his mother came under the sway of the group Moms for Liberty is telling his story publicly.
A Vice exposé details how Moms for Liberty went from a local campaign to harass one Florida school board member to a national organization driving the politicization of education in the U.S. in just a few years. The piece also includes the heartbreaking story of one of those LGBTQ+ students, Tony, and his mother, Carolyn, whose last names are withheld to protect their privacy.
As writer David Gilbert reports, after being outed by his boyfriend’s parents in early 2022, Tony was berated by his Southern Baptist mother, who told him he was going to hell and forced him into counseling with their pastor, who told him that being gay was evil.
After Tony’s mental health began a precipitous decline—he reportedly stopped playing baseball, locked himself in his bedroom, and engaged in self-harm—Carolyn briefly consented to allowing him to undergo counseling with the local chapter of LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Rainbow Youth Project.
At the same time, however, Carolyn contacted Moms for Liberty after learning about the anti-LGBTQ+ group on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. For months, the group reportedly bombarded Carolyn with anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation, convincing her that Rainbow Youth Project would “convince Tony to have his private parts removed and changed.”
When Carolyn pulled her son out of counseling with the group, Tony told her, “Mom, you just killed me.” He attempted suicide that same day.
Carolyn continued to engage with Moms for Liberty, receiving a visit from a member of the group’s Austin, Texas chapter who suggested that she sue Rainbow Youth Project for “damaging” her son. Tony’s mental health continued to decline, and a second suicide attempt followed.
“They were trying to indoctrinate me to be a foot soldier for their cause,” Carolyn now says of Moms for Liberty. “Looking back, it was never about Tony. It was about them.”
Crushingly, Tony says that his experience is not unique. He says he knows of at least four other young people who participated in a Rainbow Youth Project virtual peer group “that have been through exactly what I have been, where Moms for Liberty and Fox News have totally pulled their parents into this same trap my mom went through.”
Carolyn now holds Moms for Liberty partially responsible for what the now 19-year-old Tony went through after she found him unconscious on his bedroom floor, overdosing. “I’m responsible because I was literally putting him second to all of this, for lack of a better term, bulls**t, that they were giving to me, and I will never do that again. Ever,” she says.
“They are preying on people and when you have a question and you’re trying to save your kid, they took advantage of me and I honestly believe they do that with other parents.”
Tony said that he and his mother are working on their relationship.
“A lot of people hold her responsible for what happened and she is partially responsible. We’ve had that discussion and she knows how I feel about that,” he said. “But she’s really trying. Our relationship is getting stronger. We’re not there yet, but it’s getting stronger.”
Moms for Liberty’s tactics include relentless harassment, smear campaigns, and even threats of violence that are driving more moderate officials off local school boards and pro-LGBTQ+ educators out of the education system across the country, leading at least in part to a teacher shortage that is threatening schools.
As one California school board member told Vice, the group is “inciting people with conspiracy theories and inflammatory accusations about grooming that put trustees, teachers, and LGBTQ students in real danger.”
Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgment-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 1-866-488-7386. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Category: Bigotry
For transgender kids, a frantic rush for treatment amid bans
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-gender-affirming-care-ban-55773f9fa1e3decd9bc77990ad9af61d
I want to thank Ali for noticing the post I tried to do on this did not include the link or the article. Thankfully because she added the links so I could find it again. I don’t know why it did not post correctly. I wanted to make sure to post the photos so people can see that these are real kids going through a real gender issues that these laws would prevent, forcing them to go through a puberty of the gender they won’t want to live as or feel is them. That makes it much harder to live as the gender they are, including using the bathroom of the gender that they are and looking so different they need to spend what money they have on cosmetic surgeries to fit what some people say the look for their gender should be. Remember this fact, less than 2.4% of kids who transition regret it for many different reasons, they mostly do it for peer / family pressure often related to religion. Also a fact most should understand kids don’t turn gay or trans from reading or watching which includes seeing gay / trans / or drag queen people. It is not a choice, it is who you are. Hugs
Hugs
Original post that was screwed up here. https://scottiesplaytime.com/2023/04/22/ap-news-for-transgender-kids-a-frantic-rush-for-treatment-amid-bans/
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Asher Wilcox-Broekemeier, 13, practices guitar in his bedroom, Monday, March 27, 2023, in Sioux Falls, S.D. When Asher began menstruating, he felt a terrifying disconnect between how his body was changing on the outside and how he felt inside. His mom began researching online to understand what was going on with her son, while Asher’s father, Brian, looked to doctors for expertise. With referrals from his longtime pediatrician, Asher met with therapists and doctors who helped explore his history, personality and feelings over his whole life. (AP Photo/ErinAsher Wilcox-Broekemeier, 13, poses for a portrait with his sticker-adorned skateboard, Monday, March 27, 2023, in Sioux Falls, S.D. Asher still struggles with moments of gender dysphoria. Friendships that were once strong fizzled after Asher came out as transgender. Parents have disinvited him from their houses out of fears he’s a “bad influence.” (AP Photo/Erin Woodiel)7 of 9Asher Wilcox-Broekemeier, 13, practices with his skateboard at an elementary school playground after school hours on Monday, March 27, 2023, in Sioux Falls, S.D. Asher’s parents have noticed his emotions stabilize through his treatment. “From a parent’s view, I see him as being able to be himself authentically, which is wonderful for him,” Elizabeth said. (AP Photo/Erin Woodiel)SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — As a third grader in Utah, mandolin-playing math whiz Elle Palmer said aloud what she had only before sensed, telling a friend she planned to transfer schools the following year and hoped her new classmates would see her as a girl.
Several states northeast, Asher Wilcox-Broekemeier listened to punk rock in his room, longing to join the shirtless boys from the neighborhood playing beneath the South Dakota sunshine. It wasn’t until menstruation started, and the disconnect with his body grew, that he knew he was one of them.
Both kids’ realizations started their families on a yearslong path of doctors, therapists and other experts in transgender medicine.
Now teenagers, their journeys have hit a roadblock.
Republican lawmakers across the country are banning gender-affirming care for minors. Restrictions have gone into effect in eight states this year — including conservative Utah and South Dakota — and are slated to in at least nine more by next year.
Those who oppose gender-affirming care raise fears about the long-term effects treatments have on teens, argue research is limited and focus particularly on irreversible procedures such as genital surgery or mastectomies.
Yet those are rare. Doctors typically guide kids toward therapy or voice coaching long before medical intervention. At that point, puberty blockers, anti-androgens that block the effects of testosterone, and hormone treatments are far more common than surgery. They have been available in the United States for more than a decade and are standard treatments backed by major doctors’ organizations including the American Medical Association.
The new laws have parents scrambling to secure the care their kids need. They worry what will happen if they can’t get the medications they’ve been prescribed, especially as their kids start puberty and their bodies change in ways that can’t be reversed.
“My body’s basically this ticking time bomb, just sitting there waiting for it to go off,” said Asher Wilcox-Broekemeier, now 13.
___
Elle remembers her first day at the school after she transferred. Before leaving, she came downstairs in rainbow sparkle-embroidered cowboy boots her mother worried would only spur bullies. Taunts from kids at Elle’s prior school drove her into depression so deep she had suicidal thoughts.
But on that first day, a boy told Elle he loved her boots. Some kids bullied her, but classmates and teachers were far more supportive than at her prior school. Elle discovered new passions in hip hop and drama class, and she settled into a new school and a truer version of herself. She started to see a therapist as her uncertainty about how she fit in the gender spectrum grew more pressing.
Elle came out as a transgender girl in fifth grade. Now in seventh, she planned to start hormone treatment this summer so potential side effects wouldn’t interfere with her life during the school year, especially her team’s extracurricular math competitions.
But then Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed a gender-affirming care ban in January. In a compromise, the law let kids keep taking medications if they were already on them. So Elle’s mom rushed to get her treatment months earlier than planned, as did other parents.
The waitlist at one Utah clinic swelled to six months. Doctors were confronted with difficult decisions about who to get in for appointments.
Elle’s medication arrived in the mail just before Utah’s law went into effect. A small stick implanted in Elle’s forearm is slow-releasing hormone blockers to prevent the effects of male puberty from taking hold. Eventually she may be prescribed estrogen, and she and her parents will have to navigate the next steps, and whether they’ll find doctors to continue her care.
At least for now, they have a reprieve.
“It feels like we can breathe again now,” Cat Palmer said.
___
There’s no relief for Asher Wilcox-Broekemeier’s family — not yet.
When Asher began menstruating, he felt a terrifying disconnect between how his body was changing on the outside and how he felt inside.
Elizabeth began researching online to understand what was going on with her son, while Asher’s father, Brian, looked to doctors for expertise. With referrals from his longtime pediatrician, Asher met with therapists and doctors who helped explore his history, personality and feelings over his whole life.
Nearly two years ago, doctors prescribed puberty blockers and birth control to slow breast development, regulate menstruation and lower the pressure of his disconnect with his body.
He’s 13 now, and finds solace in music to ground him in a world of occasional bullying and constant mistaken pronouns. He practices Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” on guitar, plays trumpet in the school band and is rehearsing various singing roles for the Cinderella school musical. When he’s not thinking about testosterone to lower his voice or eventually getting top surgery, he looks forward to playing in the high school marching band next year.
Asher still struggles with moments of gender dysphoria. Friendships that were once strong fizzled after Asher came out as transgender. Parents have disinvited him from their houses out of fears he’s a “bad influence.”
But his parents have noticed his emotions stabilize through his treatment.
“From a parent’s view, I see him as being able to be himself authentically, which is wonderful for him,” Elizabeth said.
Now he and his parents worry they’ll have to start over.
In February, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a law banning the medications and procedures that doctors have increasingly prescribed for transgender teens.
Asher’s current doctors in South Dakota won’t be able to prescribe his medications, so the family is looking for a new doctor in neighboring Minnesota, where the Democratic governor has signed an executive order explicitly protecting gender-affirming care for minors. They’re hoping to find a clinic close enough they can drive to appointments and don’t have to pay for hotel stays.
The planning has been time-consuming. Logistical questions to their current South Dakota doctors for referrals have gone unanswered. They want to beat whatever onslaught of patients from other states enacting similar bans will bring to providers in Minnesota, but also want to maintain as much normalcy for Asher as they can.
The sudden twists in Asher’s trajectory makes him question why his health care is of concern to politicians.
“Even though trans people don’t make up a big percent of the population doesn’t mean that we’re not part of it still,” Asher said.
___
The full consequences of the bans on care for minors aren’t yet clear.
Dr. Nikki Mihalopoulos, an adolescent medicine doctor in a Salt Lake City specialty clinic with transgender teens, worries the new laws will make families too scared to seek help and doctors too scared of losing their licenses to provide care.
In the middle are kids like Elle and Asher.
Multiple studies have shown that transgender youth are more likely to consider or attempt suicide and less at risk for depression and suicidal behaviors when able to access gender-affirming care.
Both sets of parents are trying to shelter their kids from the stress and anxiety caused by the recent changes in the laws.
After years of worrying about their kids’ safety and mental health, they still fear what could happen if they can’t find the drugs their kids have been prescribed.
“My kid being OK is my number one priority. I know what the suicide rate is. I do not want my child to be a statistic,” Cat Palmer said of Elle.
“Kids Are Safer At Drag Shows Than At Church”
I forgot if I posted this video before. But I am finished watching it again and I like the message. I like the way this man thinks. Hugs
DeSantis Board Denies Tenure For Five Professors
The authoritative right wing governor who is against woke and pushed through the don’t say gay bills in schools including up to 12th grade (yes no child has internet and heard about gay people by the time they are legal able to vote) has appointed a board to judge each teacher / professor by their ideology. If they are not republican enough, then they get fired or denied tenure. Remember the point of tenure was to ensure that political influence was removed from higher education teaching. That has not worked well for Republicans that are now a dying minority desperate to hold on to power. This is scary as everything DeathSantis has managed to do in Florida has been copied in other red states. Hugs
Inside Higher Ed reports:
During a contentious Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday, five professors at the New College of Florida were denied tenure—even though they had already received approvals at every other point in the process.
Those professors are the latest casualties of the culture-war politics that led conservative trustees appointed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis to spearhead a self-declared “hostile takeover” of the college.
The tenure denial prompted the abrupt resignation of Matthew Lepinski, the faculty trustee on the board, who accused fellow members of destabilizing NCF. Lepinski walked out after the vote, announcing suddenly that he was “quitting the college.”
The Associated Press reports:
The school’s interim president, DeSantis ally and former state House Speaker Richard Corcoran, said in a memo to the trustees that he wanted the professors’ tenure denied or delayed in part because of the administrative changes and because of “a renewed focus on ensuring the college is moving towards a more traditional liberal arts institution.”
The trustees denied tenure for all five professors on identical 6-4 votes, with the new conservative board members in the majority. Shouts of “shame on you!” came from the audience afterward.
The five professors denied tenure are Rebecca Black and Lin Jiang, who both teach organic chemistry; Nassima Neggaz, history and religion with a focus on Islam; coastal and marine science professor Gerardo Toro-Farmer; and Hugo Viera-Vargas, whose specialty is Caribbean/Latin American studies and music.
In my 13 years in the Florida State University System I have NEVER seen a Board of Trustees overturn a tenure decision. The justification here were vague "extraordinary circumstances," with one board member citing "questionable publication histories." A 🧵on why that's bunk:
Tenure isn't just a rubber stamp. It's a years long process involving all levels of university governance, and it's incredibly thorough. These are the steps those candidates would have gone through before the Board decided to overturn it on a whim:
When you're hired to a tenure-track position, you receive both annual performance evaluations and annual tenure appraisals from your department chair. These monitor your progress towards tenure, and provide guidance for hitting the relevant marks.
At the midpoint between hiring and tenure, you undergo mid-tenure review. This involves compiling an exhaustive dossier of your accomplishments, which is appraised by a committee of your colleagues, your chair, and the dean.
All candidates must go up for tenure by their 6th year in a tenure-track position. If you go up early, as all of these New College professors did, it's because your case is a slam-dunk. You also tend to get extra scrutiny from your colleagues for going up early.
The tenure dossier is literally hundreds of pages, and it's a colossal amount of work to assemble. I've been through this process twice, once for tenure, and again for promotion to full professor. It's not fun.
Once your dossier is complied, it goes through multiple levels of review pursuant to established departmental, university, and CBA criteria. Most cases are approved (self-selection), but even then it's not 100%. Rejections happen, and it sucks for everyone involved.
By self-selection, I mean that weaker candidates tend to be weeded out earlier. Their appraisals and mid-tenure reviews make it clear that they are not progressing adequately, and they look for other positions rather than face rejection. Denial of tenure is a really bad look.
Tenure cases are reviewed by external referees, a committee of departmental faculty, the department chair, the dean, the university promotion & tenure committee, the provost, and the university president before ever getting to the Board of Trustees.
The university promotion and tenure committee is where most rejections happen. It consists of faculty from all over the university, and they take their job very seriously. The time commitment is immense, and I have the utmost respect for my colleagues who take this service on.
This basic process is used at every Florida SUS institution, including New College. There are some variations. New College, for instance, has divisions instead of departments, and a provost's advisory committee rather than a tenure and promotion committee, but you get the idea.
So by the time these cases arrived on the desks of Chris Rufo and his fellow partisan hacks, they had already gone through an exhaustive internal and external review process at the university level, and been found to have satisfied all of the relevant tenure criteria.
A note about the Boards of Trustees in the Florida State University System. They consist of 13 members: 6 appointed by the governor, 5 appointed by the SUS Board of Governors, as well as the student body president and the faculty association president.
DeSantis made 6 appointments to the Board back in January. They voted unanimously to deny tenure, and they were the only Trustees to do so. The vote was 6-4 in all five cases. I haven't seen any reporting yet on why three Trustees did not participate in the vote.
So there you have it. Five exceptional academics were voted down by a board of partisans appointed by a governor who's using the nation's highest ranked system of public universities as a political football in his quest for higher office.
Since these professors went up early, they can still apply for tenure again next year. But the more likely outcome is that they'll look for jobs elsewhere, as talented university faculty across Florida are now doing in ever-increasing numbers.
Originally tweeted by Nick Seabrook (@DrSeabrook) on April 27, 2023.
They want to get rid of tenure altogether so they can fire anyone who does parrot the facist party line.
Exactly. And when good professors start leaving the state… that is all according to plan.
i just got a text from a friend in Florida this morning. Her husband has accepted a teaching position here in Connecticut. She’ll miss the climate, but not the crazy as she so nicely put it.
We had a job opening in our department over the summer. When Dodds was announced multiple people withdrew their applications. It was a nightmare filling the job because multiple people offered the job declined the offer. This after multiple interviews and all that. We wound up with a good hire in the end (which just shows how many qualified people there are for many of these jobs) but his wife did not come here with him so I doubt he’ll stay more than a couple of years.
Taking over the press and the schools is job 1 for fascism.
Rocky Hanna, Leon Co. school superintendent who criticized Gov. DeSantis, could lose job
How dare anyone question the king wannabe? How dare anyone say something different from the authoritarian thin-skinned guy who runs the state like a mob boss. Just like the trump who first made him governor DeathSantis thinks he is smarter than anyone else and knows more than any other. He attacks those who even dare ask him a question he doesn’t like, and tries to destroy those who dare to disagree with him. One of DeathSantis claims is his standards teach students civic, but I guess it is only credit worth if it is republican ideology being supported, not time to go to the capital and protest the hateful republicans. Hugs
The administration is coming after the Leon superintendent’s teaching certificate as well.Florida officials are threatening to revoke the teaching license of a school superintendent who criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis, accusing the educator of violating several statutes and DeSantis directives and allowing his “personal political views” to guide his leadership.
Such a revocation by the state Department of Education could allow DeSantis to remove Leon County Superintendent Rocky Hanna from his elected office. The Republican Governor did that last year to an elected Democratic prosecutor in the Tampa Bay area who disagreed with his positions limiting abortion and medical care for transgender teens and indicated he might not enforce new laws in those areas.
Disney also sued DeSantis this week, saying he targeted its Orlando theme parks for retribution after it criticized the governor’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law that then banned the discussion of sexuality and gender in early grades, but has since been expanded.
Hanna has publicly opposed that law, once defied the governor’s order that barred any mandate that students wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and criticized a DeSantis-backed bill that recently passed that will pay for students to attend private school. The Leon County district, with about 30,000 students, covers Tallahassee, the state capital, and its suburbs.
“It’s a sad day for democracy in Florida, and the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, when a state agency with unlimited power and resources, can target a local elected official in such a biased fashion,” Hanna said in a statement sent to The Associated Press and other media Thursday. A Democrat then running as an independent, Hanna was elected to a second four-year term in 2020 with 60% of the vote. He plans to run for reelection next year and does not need a teacher’s license to hold the job.
“This investigation has nothing to do with these spurious allegations, but rather everything to do with attempting to silence myself and anyone else who speaks up for teachers and our public schools in a way that does not fit the political narrative of those in power,” Hanna said.
He said the investigation was spurred by a single complaint from a leader of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative education group, requesting his removal.
“We are fighting tirelessly with our local school board to no avail,” Brandi Andrews wrote DeSantis, citing Hanna’s mask mandate, his opposition to the state’s new education laws and directives and his public criticism of the governor. She noted that she had appeared in a DeSantis reelection TV commercial.
Her letter was stamped “Let’s Go Brandon,” a code used by some conservatives to replace a vulgar chant made against President Joe Biden. DeSantis is expected to soon announce he will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in next year’s election. Andrews issued a statement saying her complaint against Hanna was one of many.
Education department spokesman Alex Lanfranconi said in a statement that while officials would not discuss the Hanna investigation in detail, “nothing about this case is special.”
“Any teacher with an extensive history of repeated violations of Florida law would be subject to consequences up to and including losing their educator certificate,” he said. The threatened revocation was first reported by the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper.
Before any punishment is meted out, Hanna can have a hearing before an administrative judge, attempt to negotiate a settlement or surrender his license. He said in his statement he has not decided what he will do.
Hanna received a letter from Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. earlier this month saying an investigation found probable cause that he violated a 2021 DeSantis directive barring districts from mandating that students wear COVID-19 masks. Hanna required students to wear masks after a Leon third grader died of the disease early that school year. The fight went on for several months until Leon and several other districts had their legal challenge rejected by the courts.
Diaz also cited a memo Hanna issued before this school year telling teachers, “You do You!” and to teach the way they always had, allegedly giving instructors approval to ignore new laws enacted by DeSantis and the Legislature. That includes the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which supporters call the “Parental Rights in Education Act.”
His letter also cites the district’s failure for one month in 2020 to have an armed guard or police officer at every school as required after the 2018 Parkland high school massacre. Hanna said then that there weren’t enough available officers to meet that requirement and the education department cleared him of wrongdoing.
Diaz also complains that parents were told that their children could get an excused absence if they chose to attend a February student protest at the state capitol opposing DeSantis’ education policies.
Offering students a “free day off of school” to attend the rally “is another example of (Hanna) failing to distinguish his political views from the standards taught in Florida schools,” Diaz wrote.
Catholic Priest Calls For “Crushing Mentally Ill Tranny Freak Show Vermin” At Event Honored By Virginia Gov
“If God is for us, who can be against us? Certainly not some mentally ill tranny freak show of a four star admiral in Biden’s cabinet. Why don’t the bishops at this Catholic Church say that? That’s why they hate me, because I do and they don’t and they know it!
“If God is for us who can be against us? Certainly not the mentally ill—and they are mentally ill!—not the mentally ill tranny freak show man in Biden’s Department of Energy, who stole women’s luggage at the airport.
“Do not take offense when I call out the freaks in their freak show. It’s not my opinion. Almighty God said it, ‘A woman shall not wear a man’s garment nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing, for anyone who does such a thing is an abomination to the Lord your God.’
“So, we should crush like the vermin that they are—and they are—every filthy school board member or teacher who tries to shove their mentally ill tranny freak show down the throats of our precious children.” – Father James Altman.
As you can see below, we’ve heard from Altman before.
They can claim Hitler wasn’t christian all they want, but all Nazis were christian, it was a requirement.
Christian Nationalist Hate preacher and Taliban moral police Christian governors working together to remove the freedom from religion part of the constitution.
Notice it is his god, not a generic god or an inclusive what ever your deity may be god. Nope he wants to marry the nation to his Christian god and screw anyone with a different religious view. Hugs
Some trans news
Another trans man
Oh, that’s just brilliant. GOP lawmakers prefer that these people use the ladies rooms:
And these folks should use the men’s rooms:
If it actually happened, the initial result would be hysteria and attacks by the majority of Kansas patrons. But the actual result will be that transgender Kansans will refrain from using public bathrooms, refrain from making themselves a target, and move away. And that’s the GOP’s ultimate goal, of course: the elimination of transgender people from their state. After which, these loathsome politicians can aim their attacks at lesbians and gays, Jews, Blacks and other “undesirables.”
As April tells us it is not the trans people who blend in that these bills will hurt, but trans people like her who do not blend well due to having to go through the wrong puberty and transitioning later in life. She is correct, not that she is an ugly woman, but these laws give the haters a reason to challenge those that they don’t think are womanly enough or manly enough so these haters will demand others prove to them their gender. They don’t have that right but these laws make them think they do. April is now scared to use public facilities in her state for fear she will be assaulted by people who don’t think she is feminine enough to use a woman’s bathroom. Hugs
Texas school cancels theater visit over one parent’s concerns over actors in ‘drag’
https://www.rawstory.com/spring-branch-texas/
A Texas school district canceled a field trip to see a performance of “James and the Giant Peach” after a single parent complained that actors were dressed in drag.
The parent raised concerns at a recent school board meeting that some actors were playing both men and women in the performance, saying that was inappropriate for children, and the Spring Branch Independent School District canceled the visit, reported KTRK-TV.
“Spring Branch ISD’s pending field trips to the Main Street Theater performance of ‘James and the Giant Peach’ are being canceled due to concerns raised about the age-appropriateness of the performance,” administrators told the TV station.
The play, which is based on the Roald Dahl book, is intended for children as young as first grade, and a spokeswoman for Main Street Theater said the parent who complained was wrong.
“Drag is a different art form,” said Shannon Emerick, the theater’s marketing director. “There is a whole art form that is drag. The amazing thing is the kids just believe the story. They’re not interested in any agendas or anything else anyone thinks is going on.”
A Spring Branch parent agreed, and said that shouldn’t matter either way.
“Drag is not a big deal — it’s theater, it’s art,” said parent Cheri Thomas. “It’s been part of our culture for years.”
For those supporting anti-trans bathroom bills
These are trans men.
These men would be required to use the women’s bathrooms. These bathroom bills do cause harm because it forces all people who do not fit a gender stereotype to prove they are the gender of the bathroom they want to use. Not manly enough for the maga crowd, these bills let them challenge you going to the men’s bathroom. A woman who doesn’t look feminine enough will be challenged and assaulted by the maga crowd, who think they get to determine who uses what bathroom. Is the next thing genital inspectors at bathroom entrances. But the real goal of these maga republicans is to drive the trans people from the public. Then they will try to get rid of the rest of the LGBTQI+. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 