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 laws and 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 numerousfalse 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.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
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.
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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.
Kaitlynn 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.
KP: 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.
KP: 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.
Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni
Editor’s note: In the video, Mardy Burleson’s name is misspelled. Her first name is spelled M-A-R-D-Y, and Kaitlynn is spelled K-A-I-T-L-Y-N-N.
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Hey if these people can outright lie about the LGBTQ+ community, willing to let LGBTQ+ kids die or be pushed via violence into the closet hiding who they really were, what is faking your expertise. I already posted about a sexologist who had no experience with trans kids testifying to red state legislatures enabling his bigotry to further the harm to trans kids by giving an excuse for theirs. These people are on a mission that is far from pure but one driven by hate and bigotry to make all kids pretend to be straight and cis in the hope that they can force all adults to pretend to be straight and cis also. If they can’t force the adults to pretend to be straight or cis at least they can stop the trans adults from looking like the gender they identify with in hopes of stopping those that are passing as the gender they identify as. This they hope will mark those people in ways that make their life harder. Again their lies are OK for them because either they think their god approves or their hate is that great so nothing but the mission matters. Hugs
Pippin testifying in favor of book bans at a school board meeting in 2023 (screenshot / YouTube).
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Jennifer Pippin has repeatedly claimed to be an operating room nurse. USA TODAY, the New York Times, TC Palm and other publications have cited her as such. In 2020, Pippin argued that wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was unnecessary, citing her professional expertise.
“As a registered nurse, I’ve learned a bit. I’ve learned a whole lot more though that they won’t tell you in nursing school,” she wrote in a 2020 Facebook post. “Not wearing a mask is NOT A RISK. Not to me and not to anyone else.”
Pippin, now the chair of one of Moms for Liberty’s (M4L) first chapters in Indian River County, Florida, has also mentioned having “medical licenses” while speaking about the group’s accomplishments at a school board meeting. And in an email chain with Florida’s Department of Education, she wrote that she couldn’t make it to a meeting because she was “operating on a doctors wife.”
(Screenshot received from The Florida Fruit Loop, highlight added).
However, allegations have surfaced that these statements might not be true, and the community is growing frustrated. On Facebook, one user decried “the utter misinformation that has spewed out of [Pippin’s] mouth any time she’s shared her thoughts about public health issues.” Another sarcastically wrote that they were “shocked … to find out Jenny is a liar!!”
“We reported this years ago, but because [M4L] were so powerful politically here in Florida with Ron DeSantis, we had no voice, nobody cared,” Cindy Gibbs, a local parent and former school board candidate, told Uncloseted Media.
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Is She Really a Nurse?
Despite Pippin’s claims of being a nurse, there is a stack of evidence suggesting otherwise. One individual shared screenshots of emails they received from a Florida Department of Health (DOH) official in 2024 after they filed a complaint against Pippin when they noticed her license wasn’t turning up in database searches. In one email, the DOH official states that Pippin had been under investigation since April 1, 2024, for potentially misrepresenting herself as a nurse and that no license had been found.
Uncloseted Media also filed a public records request with the DOH for the license. In an email, they said they were “unable to find anyone licensed by the department matching the information … provided.” The department did not respond to a request for further comment.
In addition, Uncloseted Media was unable to find any license associated with Pippin in the Florida Department of Health’s medical license database or the NURSYS database, which records multi-state licensees. We also checked the certification database for the Competency and Credentialing Institute, which certifies certain specialized nurses including operating room specialists, and found nothing.
While records do exist for Jennifer Hughes Pippin, a nutritionist and dietician at Florida State College in Jacksonville, her listed address and social media profiles do not match the Pippin from Indian River County.
The Florida Nurses Association also did not find any record of Pippin’s membership.
Multiple sources and news articles say Pippin was formerly employed by the Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital. Despite this, Uncloseted Media was unable to confirm she held a position there. The hospital declined to comment on the status of current or former employees as a matter of policy.
The only employment information we found listed for Pippin later than 2021 was in a Sebastian City Council meeting agenda from 2023, where she says she is “self employed” working for Organize Me!, a gig-based home cleaning service.
Why It Matters
Falsely presenting as a nurse is a phenomenon that has been on the rise since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pippin’s case, though, is of particular interest because she is often cited as an influential figure in Florida politics. In her role with M4L, Pippin has filed hundreds of requests to ban books—many of which include LGBTQ or racial justice themes—from school libraries. Some of the books she’s requested to ban include a graphic novel adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir about growing up Black and queer.
In 2022, Pippin was also appointed by the Florida Department of Education to a workgroup of parents tasked with developing a training for state educators to comply with the classroom censorship laws signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, who has spoken at a M4L summit. One of these laws is the notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits educators from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity.
And earlier this summer, she filed a complaint against a Vero Beach wine bar for hosting an all-
ages drag event, which she alleges contained performances with sexual themes. The bar’s owner, who is also a city official, denies the allegations.
This is not M4L’s first brush with controversy. The group’s co-founder, Bridget Ziegler, allegedly assisted her husband in sexually assaulting another woman. An Indiana chapter came under fire for quoting Adolf Hitler in a 2023 newsletter. And the group has hosted speakers who’ve spread medical misinformation on multiple occasions, claiming that doctors are “sterilizing and mutilating [trans] children” and that gender-affirming health care is “snake oil.”
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Pippin’s Response
When presented with these allegations, Pippin did not provide any evidence of a nursing license. In an email, she told Uncloseted Media that she was “surprised to see these allegations being raised again — especially considering they were addressed over a year ago.” She pointed to a prior case involving stalking and said the answers about whether she is a licensed nurse can be found via that case. However, the case and its associated documents are not available online.
Pippin testifying before the Indian River County School Board (screenshot/YouTube).
Pippin has previously stated that the reason her license is not publicly accessible is because she was ordered to “hide [it] from the public for five years” after filing a fraud suit in 2020 against someone who she says had used her license to file for unemployment. In emails with Uncloseted Media, she reaffirmed this story.
While Uncloseted Media was unable to verify the existence of this fraud case, experts say that such a decision from the court would be “unusual.”
“We have fought to make nurses licenses private and have been unable to do so even in at-risk areas,” says Willa Fuller, executive director of the Florida Nurses Association.
Multiple people in Indian River County say that Pippin’s questionable nursing status has been an open secret for years, but the issue didn’t start attracting wider attention until it was covered by The Florida Fruit Loop, a local Facebook page that promises to provide “a daily dose of MAGA butthurt.” Last weekend, Pippin left a note in the page’s comments titled “CEASE AND DESIST LETTER,” where she called multiple statements made by the page defamatory. However, the notice does not mention or dispute any allegations made about her nursing license.
The intro to Pippin’s comment (screenshot received from The Florida Fruit Loop).
The Implications
Falsely presenting as a nurse is a crime in Florida under certain circumstances, with one woman being arrested in the state for this just last month. However, in emails reviewed by Uncloseted Media, a DOH official cautioned that the laws only apply in specific cases.
“For those statutes where an unlicensed person is allegedly holding themselves out as a licensed healthcare provider to apply, the Subject would need to hold themselves out / lead the public to believe they are a current and active licensee,” the official wrote.
While the full results of Pippin’s investigation have not yet been released, the individual who corresponded with the DOH says the department later informed them that their complaint “lacked … a criminal finding.”
The DOH official did note, though, that the video of Pippin’s testimony before the school district could be considered a violation. Pippin has also publicly used the formal title “registered nurse” on multiple occasions, including in a rant against masking posted to the Republican Club of Indian River’s Facebook page in 2020; in a Department of Education report; and in Vero News.
“She has been out here presenting herself as an authority on things in the world of health care and education,” says Cindy Gibbs. “And the groups of people that she associates herself with … just keep generating and regenerating the same stuff: ‘oh, Jennifer knows things because she’s a registered nurse.’”
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But how does Google’s algorithm decide which results show up? And how do these results influence LGBTQ kids, their parents and Americans at large who are searching for help?
Uncloseted Media asked five Americans from around the country to Google five common queries related to LGBTQ identity, religion and parenting.
The results were alarming and raised an urgent question: With nearly 40% of LGBTQ youth seriously considering suicide just last year, what happens when a queer teen or the parent of a gay kid in crisis turns to Google?
Photos courtesy of participants Mark Just, Genna and Melanie Brown, April Samberg, Tommy O’Neil. Photo of Genna and Melanie by Kaoly Gutteriez.
“I’m Christian, my daughter is a lesbian,” Melanie Brown, a Southern Baptist from High Point, North Carolina, types into Google.
When Brown presses enter, Bible Bulletin Board comes up as the third result, with the suggestion of “offering hope for change,” and “lead[ing] the way to the alternative to homosexuality.” It goes on to explain that “homosexuality is contrary to God’s Word. It is sin and as always results in sin’s destructive effects on the individual and on those close to them.”
In the living room, Brown’s 15-year-old daughter Genna, with her dog on her lap, Googles “accurate information on gay kids and what to do.”
Focus on the Family (FOTF) is the first result. She clicks the link and lands on the platform of a hyper-religious organization known for promoting conversion therapy and labeling her sexuality as sinful.
The site, which presents itself as a reputable religious source, features a tab titled “Understanding Homosexuality” and a section under their resources for “Homosexuality.” It states: “[FOTF] is committed to upholding God’s design for the expression of human sexuality: a husband and wife in a marriage.”
It offers suggested reading on “redemption” from a gay lifestyle, along with 11 counseling resources aimed at changing sexual orientation, including The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, which guarantees “professional assistance … for persons who experience unwanted homosexual attractions.”
The language is intentionally padded, which means Genna and her mom—and many of the other millions of Christian parents of queer kids—may never know that Google led them to a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group. FOTF is known for its long-standing opposition to LGBTQ rights, for spreading anti-LGBTQ disinformation and for framing homosexuality and transgender identity as sinful and disordered.
Screenshot courtesy of Genna Brown. Photo by Kaoly Gutierrez.
In South Boston, Virginia, Tommy O’Neil Googles, “My daughter just came out as trans and I’m a Christian.” As a father of two, he wants what’s best for his kids. According to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Google’s second result, O’Neil should recognize that God doesn’t make mistakes when assigning sex and give sympathy for those who are indoctrinated in the “transgender cult.”
Thousands of miles away in Anchorage, Alaska, 38-year-old bisexual woman April Samberg Googles, “I am bisexual and have a husband who is Christian, am I going to hell?”
The third result is once again an article by FOTF that tells April that “same-sex-attracted strugglers” and “transgender and homosexual lust and behavior are wrong.”
In Cincinnati, 44-year-old Mark Just Googles, “accurate information on homosexual kids and what to do.” FOTF is the top search result.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Just told Uncloseted Media. “It’s disturbing because if there are people out there who want to accept and understand their children or loved ones, this is what they’re being pointed to.”
“[I feel] fear for the queer kids with Christian parents who will be seeing that and thinking it’s good advice, and sorrow for the kids with parents who already have,” says Genna Brown, who was a “self-loathing, suicidal kid” who thought God would punish her for being gay before she came out to her now accepting parents. “It’s pretty awful that this is what’s being pushed for advice. This has no doubt harmed people.”
Uncloseted Media also asked folks in Taiwan, Lebanon, China, Hong Kong, Canada and India to Google similar queries. All of them had FOTF turn up as a top search result.
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Why Does Google Allow This?
Google, like other search engines, compiles information and directs users to various websites by referencing the titles of web pages that it judges to be most reflective of what was searched.
“Google’s algorithm is notoriously a black box,” says Jesse Ringer, founder of Method and Metric, a search engine optimization (SEO) growth company. “That’s intentional to keep their competitive advantage.”
What we do know is that Google ranks search results by first crawling the web with an automated program called “spiders” to follow links from page to page and collect data.
It uses text matching to identify documents that it thinks are relevant to a query and then ranks them based on a combination of popularity, freshness, location and previous links clicked.
But for people searching for reliable information, its process can be problematic.
“Google doesn’t rank based on accuracy, but on popularity and query matching,” says Dirk Lewandowski, professor of information research and retrieval at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. “This is based on clicks and a network of how many other links are directed to this website. … Of course, users click what is shown in the first position. So we have kind of a rich get richer.”
How to Get a High Ranking
As websites with the highest rankings continue to receive more clicks, websites like FOTF can also employ other tactics to keep their prominent placement.
Backlinking—the process of having other web pages hyperlink back to your site—is one of the ways to maintain your high ranking.
“Backlinks are a big part of popularity. So the relationship between other websites linking to this source is a big part of Google’s algorithm,” says Ringer. “There are SEO businesses that build link farms so that the content of their clients can go higher. They create a network effect and they link to each other. It is not unreasonable to think that [FOTF] has hired either an SEO person or they’ve hired an external agency to contribute to that.”
According to Francesca Tripodi, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, ranking can also be gamed by matching keywords to content. Tripodi looked at the metadata of progressive and conservative companies and found that conservative content creators “are much better at doing this.”
“They are savvy at creating new sets of words and tagging their content with them,” she says. “That’s not something I’m seeing with progressive content creators.”
Tripodi says that not only does conservatism thrive online, it might be the only perspective returned.
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“They are well-funded companies with large production budgets and effective digital marketing teams,” she wrote in a 2019 testimony about conservatism and Google searches. “This is why when you search for liberal phrases like ‘gender identity’ or ‘social justice’ the top returns … are conservative content creators.”
Google declined to speak on record with Uncloseted Media for this story.
In an email, a spokesperson said: “Like any search engine, Google indexes the content that’s available on the open web, relying on systems like keyword matching to surface relevant results. We are largely guided by local law when it comes to removing pages from search results.”
What If It’s Harmful or Illegal?
The United States notoriously protects harmful or misleading content—including anti-LGBTQ hate speech—under the First Amendment.
“The situation in [other countries] is a bit different than in America,” Lewandowski says. “For instance, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So Google bans these sites, but they don’t ban them in the U.S.”
Section 230 of the U.S. law protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by implying that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements on the internet. This law largely takes legal pressure off of Google.
And in 2003, an Oklahoma court ruled that Google’s rankings are subjective opinions and thus constitutionally protected.
Google’s policies for tamping down on harmful content “don’t apply to web results.” Thus, there is little moderation on the web pages that pop up for Americans who use the search engine.
The spokesperson for Google says that “[they] hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to legal requirements to remove pages from Google search results” and that “they don’t remove web results except for child sexual abuse, highly personal information, spam, site owner requests, and valid legal requests.”
But according to the company, “determining whether content is illegal is not always a determination that Google is equipped to make.”
Tripodi says this might be why groups like FOTF are still showing up, even though conversion therapy is illegal in 23 states. She says these groups may have found a loophole in Google’s policy by “tricking” the search engine into thinking they are providing “resources” and not simply a recommendation for conversion therapy.
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What Can Google Do to Fix This?
“Google has a responsibility for what is coming up in their results because people trust [them],” says Lewandowski. “They think something is correct or accurate because it is number one in Google.”
Fifteen-year-old Genna Brown is one of the 85% of Americans who feel this way, according to a 2025 study.
“Isn’t the first result typically ranked most credible?” she says. “Because I typically trust the first result more.”
“It’s pretty concerning what comes up when you search for these things,” Ringer says. “There needs to be more done to educate the people who are doing the searches on understanding news and information.”
But vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ kids who are living in households where they are told they are going to hell and parents who are often confused and in crisis themselves, are being led by Google’s algorithm to believe that being queer is wrong.
“1000% yes, these results concern me,” says Genna Brown. “We’re talking about organizations that promote practices like conversion therapy, which is insane. … I wish there was some disclaimer. Like, ‘Google has determined this to be a subjective query. As such, we can’t verify the following results. Proceed with caution.’”
Tripodi says she thinks consumers are responsible for about 20% of the burden by researching and verifying the sources they learn from. But she agrees with Brown in that Google carries an ethical responsibility for the content it chooses to rank and promote.
“As a global corporation that gobbles up all other possibilities for information, Google has a responsibility to ensure that its content is accurate and not harmful,” Tripodi says. “[It’s their job] to ensure that the information that they surface is accurate and reliable because we know people trust that information.”
Uncloseted Media reached out to Focus on the Family, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Bible Bulletin Board. They did not respond to our request for comment.
Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Spencer Macnaughton.
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This is more of the rights push to erase the LGBTQ+ from society. They are trying to return to the past when people could be fired simply for being gay. These people really carve the society of the 1950s when the LGBTQ+ were not in public society and the normal was considered straight and cis with any divergence considered an illness. I think it is because they can’t imagine something if they don’t feel it or understand it. They are straight so straight should be what everyone feels, to feel differently is weird and yucky to them. They view same sex acts as yucky because it doesn’t appeal to them, but they don’t stop to think that is how gay people feel about mixed sex relationships. Hugs
The 2-term School Board member just took over as Executive Director of Project Pride SRQ.
Sarasota County School Board member Tom Edwards just joined a nonprofit promoting diversity programs. Now, local Republicans say he should resign his public office, but the incumbent brushed that off as a desperate attempt to distract from other bad news for the GOP.
Project Pride SRQ last week announced that Edwards, a second-term School Board member, had taken over as Executive Director of the Sarasota organization.
“Project Pride envisions a silo-free community that is proud, resilient, and unified by shared values, not tribal policies,” Edwards said last week. “I am so excited that Project Pride has given me this platform to do this important work.”
But the Republican Party of Sarasota (RPOS) immediately called out Edwards’ new job as a conflict.
“In his new role, Tom Edwards will have overt conflicts of interest. The press release announcing this new job said Edwards will work to establish multiple programs in the schools and after school to further this radical ideology rejected by the vast majority of Americans,” reads a statement from the party.
“Tom Edwards can do whatever that he wants in his private life. But this position leverages him as a School Board member to push programs in the public, taxpayer-funded schools of which he has enormous influence. He cannot hold this position and look out for the well-being of all students. He clearly is incentivized to prioritize a small minority.”
Edwards made clear he has no intention of stepping away from his new work.
“Mr. Brill, is this a political ploy created as another distraction from the (Jeffrey) Epstein files? Or perhaps, with the upcoming School Board elections, you are concerned about two of your previously-endorsed School Board members’ reputations spoiling the chances of election for their replacements? If that’s the case, is it the one who was embroiled in the ‘Throuplegate’ scandal along with her husband, who was terminated as the State Republican Party chair because of rape allegations? Or is it the one who behaved like a spoiled child, refusing to return to her post and complete her term after losing her election? I must have missed it when you called for their resignations,” Edwards said in a statement.
“Only you can answer what keeps you up at night. In the meantime, I will continue to do the good School Board work that the community – from both sides of the aisle – overwhelmingly reelected me to do. Additionally, I will use my new position at Project Pride SRQ to build a stronger, kinder, more resilient community that can respond to the bullying tactics frequently deployed on members of the LGTBQ+ community. I remain steadfast in building coalitions that foster inclusivity and stand against the elimination of human rights for any element of the population.”
Edwards, who is openly gay, has faced criticism since his election to the School Board in 2020, when he defeated incumbent School Board member Eric Robinson. Gov. Ron DeSantis listed the School Board member as a top target in the last election cycle, but Edwards won re-election regardless.
Edwards walked out of a School Board meeting in 2023 after members of the public hurled homophobic slurs at him. A few months later, he was among those members calling for fellow School Board member Bridget Ziegler to resign amid her own sex scandal; she remains on the board.
Now, Republicans want Edwards to step down, and labeled his agenda as extreme.
“School Board Member Tom Edwards is a supporter of radical LGBTQ beliefs and has pushed them as a School Board member — completely out of touch with what the Sarasota County community of parents want,” reads a statement sent out by RPOS Chair Jack Brill. “But now he has been named Executive Director of Project Pride SRQ, which consistently pushes ideas far outside the mainstream.”
Project Pride SRQ leaders had a different take on Edwards’ record.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Tom as our new executive director,” said Justyn Hunter-Ceruti, Project Pride SRQ Board President. “His leadership, experience, and deep ties to the community will be invaluable as we step into this next chapter. I look forward to working with Tom to advance our mission and ensure that Project Pride continues to be a powerful force for inclusion, connection, and resilience in Sarasota and beyond.”
Added Harry Cicchetti, Vice President of the organization’s board: “Tom brings a passion for our mission, a wealth of experience, and a dedication to advancing equity, justice and inclusion not only for LGBTQ+ people but for all who face barriers, which our organization is committed to addressing at this pivotal time in our culture. The board looks forward to working with Tom as he leads our organization into our next chapter of growth and impact.”
Regardless, the fact that the organization also said Edwards will work on issues like a peer-to-peer Support Squad of students to identify bullying and mobilize around victims has GOP leaders concerned.
“We call on Tom Edwards to resign his School Board seat if he wants to be Executive Director of this organization,” reads the RPOS statement. “Holding both positions is antithetical to ethical behavior and harmful to public school students.”
Jacob Ogles
Jacob Ogles has covered politics in Florida since 2000 for regional outlets including SRQ Magazine in Sarasota, The News-Press in Fort Myers and The Daily Commercial in Leesburg. His work has appeared nationally in The Advocate, Wired and other publications. Events like SRQ’s Where The Votes Are workshops made Ogles one of Southwest Florida’s most respected political analysts, and outlets like WWSB ABC 7 and WSRQ Sarasota have featured his insights. He can be reached at jacobogles@hotmail.com.
Again I keep saying this, it is a fundamentalist Christian attempt to remove all media featuring or talking about the LGBTQ+. They do not want LGBTQ+ children seeing themselves in media, in library books, but more important they do not want straight cis kids to read or see kids who are different who are accepted. They want kids to grow up thinking those LGBTQ+ kids are bad and need to be ostracized or harassed / threatened to be cis straight. They want to return to the society / schools of the 1950s. These people can not accept that other people and other cultures exist that are different from the way they feel or live. They want what Russia and Hungary did, outlaw being gay in public. Hugs
The Florida Department of Education has identified more than 50 books it says are no longer permitted in public schools across the state, citing inappropriate and pornographic content.
But some parents and advocacy groups are questioning whether the state should have the final say over what books are allowed in schools — including in Broward County.
A parent who spoke with Local 10’s Roy Ramos on Thursday with believes families should have input, and that local reviews should take place before books are removed.
“You will remove these 55 books,” said Stephana Ferrell, a parent and director of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, responding to the state’s recent directive.
The Department of Education’s list bans 55 titles from public school libraries statewide. Ferrell said the move overrides local input.
“Every district basically got that message that those 55 books violate the law according to the state. It doesn’t matter if local community standards say no, these books are okay for certain grades and we believe them to fit our community standards,” she said.
Local 10 obtained a copy of the banned list. Some of the titles were described by the state as pornographic and unsuitable for children.
Among them: Choke, This Book Is Gay, Forever, and Breathless.
Portions of these books contain graphic content, including descriptions of male genitalia, sexual acts and intercourse — some of which were too explicit to air on television.
“They are saying we can remove these books based on experts alone and it doesn’t matter what the literary value is,” Ferrell said. “They are making the argument that our school library are government speech and they can decide what is appropriate or not.”
Under current Florida law, parents may challenge books in their school district. Those challenges are then reviewed by a committee to determine whether the content is inappropriate.
Ferrell argues the state is bypassing that process entirely.
“I believe that you have to review these books in their entirety to determine whether or not the intent of the work is to sexually excite the reader,” she added. “There is no opportunity for local parents to get involved. “None of it matters. The state has decided for us.”
Broward County schools were given until Tuesday to comply with the directive and remove the books.
The list currently includes 55 titles, but critics believe more will be added.
Local 10 has reached out to Broward County Public Schools for comment on the state’s order.
I watched videos of this protest and the complete violence of the police going full out assault against the gay protestors who were just standing there. The Christian group in anger at what the mayor said about them, so the next day blocked access to the town hall not letting reporters, workers, or people in the community into the town hall. The Christian group did not have a permit and violated sound level ordnances but the police did not try to remove them or force them to let people through to the town hall. But the police did again violently attack the counter protestors from the neighborhoods. It seems clear the police are pro the Christian haters who want conversion therapy done on LGBTQ+ kids to wipe out anyone not straight and cis. The police chaplain is on the fly for the hate group as you can see below. The Christian hate group wants to force everyone to live as their church doctrines demand. They are extremely hateful towards the LGBTQ+ community. They demand that people respect and accommodate their views but refuse to accept the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, not accept the rights that the LGBTQ+ communities are due. I will post the rest of the post by Joe. My. God. but at the end I will post a video that streamer Vaush made on this subject also. As Vaush says the prosecutors refused to press charges on many the police arrested. Maybe because they were innocent protestors viciously attacked by bigoted police. Hugs
In the days after a chaotic confrontation between police and protesters at a conservative Christian rally on Capitol Hill, several groups have questioned why the demonstration was held at Cal Anderson Park and how the city could have better prepared.
The rally, advocating “freedom from same sex attraction” and ”the sacrality of biological gender,” was permitted in the heart of the state’s most LGBTQ+-friendly neighborhood, in a park named for the state’s first openly gay elected official.It attracted scores of protesters who scrapped with police. Twenty-three people were arrested.
Local LGBTQ+ advocates and at least one City Hall politician expressed anger the permit was granted for Cal Anderson, alleging the location was intended to rile the neighborhood’s residents.
The Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced via a social media post on Tuesday evening the FBI will investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups regarding last weekend’s chaotic Cal Anderson Park rally.
Dan Bogino posted the announcement on X at 5:15 p.m., writing, “We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert. Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
MayDay USA, which describes itself as a Christian Pro-Life organization, held the rally at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. It was met by LGBTQ+ protesters in a competing rally. At some point, police were called in, and there were multiple scuffles between the group and officers.
One of the prominent supporters of Mayday USA is former Spokane Valley state representative Matt Shea, of the “On Fire Ministries,” according to the Radical Women Seattle. Mayday USA organizers have set up a tour of five cities in the country, with Saturday’s event being held in what is considered the heart of the LGBTQ+ community in Seattle on Capitol Hill.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said the far-right rally was specifically held at the park in Seattle’s known LGBTQ+ neighborhood “to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values.”
In a statement, Mayor Harrell called Seattle “a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ communities, and we stand with our trans neighbors when they face bigotry and injustice.” Harrell said anarchists joined the counterprotesters, which resulted in violence and arrests. He said the event organizes shut down the event early after being asked to do so.
Matt Shea, the far-right extremist cited above, has appeared here multiple times, most recently in February 2023 when a church then-affiliated with Shea was ordered to pay Planned Parenthood nearly $1 million in legal fees and a fine related to protests that “interfered with patient care.”
He first earned national headlines in 2019 when leaked chats showed his violent fantasies about executing non-Christians and when it was learned that he had participated in militia drills to train young men for “biblical warfare.”
Shea advocates for the creation of a 51st US state based on “biblical law.” He has also said that all American men who fail to avow allegiance to Jesus should be executed.
He was expelled by the Washington state Republican caucus but refused to resign even after the feds found that he had “participated in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States” by helping plan the armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016.
Shea did not seek reelection in 2020 and is now the pastor of Covenant Christian Church in Spokane.
The entire article is saying that the public schools should be for everyone … except LGBTQ+ kids and parents of those kids. Yes gay and trans children exist and need / deserve to see themselves represented in the community just as much as straight cis kids do. This is a hate bill, banning a group because the majority in charge doesn’t like them. The flags they say are ok to fly like the Gladstone flag or the thin blue line flag are not neutral and they most definitely represent a political ideology. Again this is about erasing the LGBTQ+ kids / people from society to make the Christian fundamentalist and insecure parents who know they can’t have produced a gay / trans kid feel better about themselves. It is a desire to force the fundamentalist view point on every one regardless if they believe it. It is a desperate attempt to return to the 1950s. Hugs
The law effectively bans Pride flags and other LGBTQ flags from being flown at schools or government buildings. In 2019, Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Montana, flew a Pride flag over the state Capitol, which drew criticism from Republicans.
Language in the bill does allow flags like the Gadsden flag and other “official historical flags” to be flown. It also allows flags for law enforcement officers and fallen officers, like the “Thin Blue Line” flag, which Gov. Gianforte, R-Montana, flew above the Montana Capitol on Thursday, May 15, 2025.
When HB 819 was debated on the floor of the Montana House of Representatives, Mitchell said the bill was intended to ensure government entities remain a place of neutrality and was not to impact an individual’s free speech.
“Government buildings, schools and public facilities serve all citizens and should not be used to promote political, ideological or activist messaging,” said Mitchell during the March 6 floor debate.
Critics of HB 819 say the bill targets free speech by allowing provisions for specific flags like the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag to be flown, while others were prohibited. Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, said under the language, a Confederate flag could be flown.
“What we’re doing here is we’re expressly prescribing what speech is allowed, ‘these flags’, and what speech is not allowed, ‘these other flags’,” said Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, on March 6. “And as for the definition of ‘promoting a certain ideology,’ those [flags] are expressly prohibited, but at the exact same time we’re sitting here with a bill proclaiming to be about free speech, we’re expressly prohibiting some and promoting others.”
Flags of tribal nations, foreign countries, military service branches, the POW/MIA flag and official school or government entities’ flags are also permitted under the law.
HB 819 went into effect immediately after Governor Greg Gianforte signed it.
This year, both Utah and Idaho have passed similar laws restricting or banning Pride flags on government property or at schools.
New Montana law decides which flags fly in public schools.
Jacob Ogles
Scottie's Playtime 