At the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center in Basile, detainees say they were forced into hard labor – and sexually assaulted and stalked by an assistant warden
‘It is for my daughter and my family that I have endured everything that I have in this detention facility for the past 28 months.’ Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian
A Google Maps screenshot of the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, Louisiana.
Photograph: Google Maps
A spokesperson for Geo categorically denied the allegations detailed in the complaints.
Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
Queer and trans immigrants at a detention facility in south Louisiana have alleged that they faced sexual harassment and abuse, medical neglect and coerced labor by staff at the facility, and that they were repeatedly ignored or faced retaliation for speaking out.
In multiple legal complaints, immigrants detained at the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, Louisiana, said they were recruited into an unsanctioned work program that forced them to perform hard manual labor for as little as $1 per day. Detainees also alleged that queer people were targeted by an assistant warden who stalked, harassed and sexually assaulted them.
Three current and former detainees who spoke to the Guardian said that, between 2023 and 2025, they endured months of abuse from an assistant warden named Manuel Reyes and his associates. In their complaints to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the detainees also said that they faced retaliation for reporting the abuse to authorities, alleging that Reyes and other staff beat them and denied them medical treatment.
“I was treated worse than an animal,” said Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, one of the detainees. “We don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
Garcia-Valenzuela, a trans man detained at SLIPC, has alleged that, as part of the unsanctioned work program, Reyes forced him to move heavy cabinets and cinder blocks, and to clean using industrial-strength chemicals without gloves or protective gear. When Garcia-Valenzuela complained of injuries from the work program, he said, Reyes and his associates forcefully stripped him naked and mocked him.
Kenia Campos-Flores, who is trans and non-binary, told the Guardian that they suffered from persistent migraines and chest pain after exposure to cleaning chemicals they were made to use during unofficial, overnight work shifts. Campos-Flores also alleged in a complaint they were persistently sexually harassed by Reyes, who entered their dorm and stole possessions including their boxers.
Another trans detainee, Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, complained that a stripper chemical he was told to use to clean the facility floors seeped through his fabric shoes and burned the skin of his feet. On more than one occasion, while Renteria-Gonzalez was bent over cleaning, he said, Reyes came up from behind and inappropriately touched him. The assistant warden also told Renteria-Gonzalez he was watching the detainee through security cameras, including while he was showering.
A fourth detainee, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, is a cisgender, queer woman who said that Reyes forced her to perform oral sex on him on a “near daily basis” between February and May 2024, threatening to kill her if she refused, according to her complaint.
Doe, who was deported to the Dominican Republic in January this year, has chosen not to share her name or speak publicly because she fears that Reyes will make good on his threat to find and harm her, her lawyer said.
Taken together, the detainees’ stories present a troubling pattern of mistreatment and abuse inside SLIPC, their attorneys said. Though the alleged abuse took place across two presidential administrations, advocates worry that conditions inside detention facilities could further deteriorate amid the Trump administration’s present push to arrest and detain a record number of immigrants. Trans and queer immigrants in detention are especially vulnerable, advocates said, given that the administration is also moving to roll back key civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people in federal custody.
The detainees’ allegations are detailed in four separate administrative complaints filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue the government for injuries caused by federal employees. The government has six months to adjudicate the complaints, or the claimants could move forward with a federal lawsuit. They were submitted in September by Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana and the National Immigration Project. Those groups have also submitted a civil rights complaint to the DHS oversight bodies, including the office for civil rights and civil liberties (CRCL), on behalf of the detainees.
“This was a sadistic late-night work program,” said Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney with RFK Human Rights. “It was designed to target vulnerable trans men or masculine-presenting LGBTQ people, who [Reyes] coerced into participating.”
When detainees tried to report their abuse, Decker said, Ice officials repeatedly disregarded them. Officials dismissed multiple reports of abuse in accordance with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), Decker said, as well as complaints to the Ice office of inspector general (OIG), the department charged with oversight of Ice.
“These people screamed for help. They filed grievances. They filed complaints under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, they filed verbal complaints through the office of the inspector general. They did everything to get help,” Decker said. “And they were systematically ignored, and complaints were buried.”
The Guardian attempted to locate Reyes though multiple means, including public records and social media searches and were unable to contact him. Reyes is not facing criminal charges for the alleged sexual abuse at the facility.
He is no longer employed at SLIPC, Decker said – he left the facility in July 2024. But, Renteria-Gonzalez and Garcia-Valenzuela, who remain detained at SLIPC, told the Guardian other staff at the facility have continued to retaliate against them, placing them in solitary confinement and denying them full access to medical care.
The DHS and Ice did not respond to the Guardian’s queries about the detainees’ allegations, nor did the agencies address whether any of the detainees’ Prea complaints were investigated.
‘It’s devastating and heartbreaking, everything that they do to us in here’
Located about 90 miles (145km) from the Gulf coast in the rural town of Basile, Louisiana, SLIPC was once a correctional facility. But in 2019, it opened as an Ice detention facility, operated by Geo Group, one of the largest private prison and surveillance firms in the US.
Over the past several years, the detention center, which houses mostly women as well as a few trans people, has attracted a string of allegations of civil and human rights violations, medical neglect and poor hygiene. In 2022, an internal inspection by the office of the immigration detention ombudsman – an independent office within the Department of Homeland Security – found that the facility had insufficient medical staffing, and had been inconsistent in addressing the medical and mental health needs of detainees. A 2025 report by the Yale Law School also found that detainees were “left hungry, cold, and in an atmosphere detainees describe as abusive”.
A Google Maps screenshot of the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, Louisiana. Photograph: Google Maps
“It’s devastating and heartbreaking, everything that they do to us in here,” said Renteria-Gonzalez, who first arrived at the facility in May 2023. “We struggle on a daily basis.”
He said his decision to remain in detention while his immigration case is under review – rather than accept deportation – has been painful.
Renteria-Gonzalez came to the US when he was 12 and has been in the country for 31 years. His eight-year-old daughter is a US citizen. “It is for my daughter and my family that I have endured everything that I have in this detention facility for the past 28 months,” he said. “It’s so that I can make it back home to her.”
Renteria-Gonzalez said Reyes first recruited him to participate in the late-night work program in September 2023, according to his complaint. Reyes would often come into his dorm late at night – at around 2 or 3am – to wake him up for his night shift.
“It’s like he lived [at the detention center] 24/7,” Renteria-Gonzalez told the Guardian.
Each recruit worked alone, during different times or in different parts of the detention facility – meaning they were often alone with Reyes, the detainees allege. During these times, Renteria-Gonzalez said, he would watch them work and probe them with invasive and inappropriate questions. “It made me feel uncomfortable,” he said. “He used to sit on his phone and asked us for personal information to look us up on Facebook and stuff.”
Sometimes, he said, Reyes entered detainees’ dorms late at night for no particular reason, and would take their used underwear and personal hygiene products. On other occasions, Renteria-Gonzalez alleged in the complaint, Reyes would stalk him as he went to and from the showers and ask invasive questions: “And after, he would say: ‘Tell me what were you doing in the shower?’”
Twice, Renteria-Gonzalez said, Reyes came up behind him and touched him inappropriately. Another SLIPC officer, according to Renteria-Gonzalez, began to sexually harass him as well, sending him explicit notes and showing him pornographic images of herself.
“I just felt overwhelmed,” he said. “I thought enough was enough.”
Eventually, he realized he wasn’t alone.
After being detained at SLIPC in February 2024, Garcia-Valenzuela said he also found himself trapped in Reyes’s unofficial work program.
Mario Garcia-Valenzuela. Photograph: Mario Garcia-Valenzuela
Garcia-Valenzuela had fled to the US in 2014 from Mexico, where he was tortured by members of a drug cartel. “I have no choice, that’s why I’m fighting,” he said. “Because I know that as soon as they deport me, I’m going to be handed over to the cartels and I’m going to be tortured and killed – ripped into pieces.”
But in SLIPC he faced a new kind of horror. He alleged that on more than one occasion he was told to move heavy metal filing cabinets back and forth across a room. When he struggled to lift the furniture, Reyes would taunt him, he said, saying: “If you think you are a man, I’m going to treat you like a man.”
In the spring of 2024, Garcia-Valenzuela reported sexual harassment on the basis of his gender, in accordance with Prea. He said he felt targeted due to his gender identity and wanted the fact he is transgender removed from his file, as a measure of protection. But an Ice officer responded that “even if we take off your transgender marker, there is no hiding that you are transgender”, noting Garcia-Valenzuela’s physical appearance, he said. To Garcia-Valenzuela’s knowledge, no follow-up investigation into Reyes was conducted.
Renteria-Gonzalez’s complaints were dismissed as well, Renteria-Gonzalez said.
A spokesperson for Geo categorically denied the allegations detailed in the complaints.
“GEO strongly disagrees with these baseless allegations, which are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contractors,” said Christopher V Ferreira, a Geo group spokesperson.
Ferreira added that “GEO has comprehensive policies in place for the reporting and investigation of all incidents that occur at the Center, including instances of assault and/or sexual assault. These policies are governed by standards and requirements established by the US Department of Homeland Security.”
Geo did not respond to questions about Reyes’s employment status at SLIPC.
Harsh retaliation
The detainees who filed complaints against Reyes and other SLIPC staff said that they faced harsh retaliation for doing so.
When Jane Doe filed a Prea complaint with Ice using a paper form and through the phone hotline, detailing that Reyes had sexually assaulted her, she received no response, according to her legal complaint.
But afterwards, Reyes redoubled his efforts to stalk her, the complaint alleges – and forced her to perform oral sex on him, saying he had her cornered in the facility’s “camera blind spots” where no one would see them.
When she attempted to resist, Reyes told her he had found her mother’s home address in the Dominican Republic, Doe alleges in the complaint, and told her that if she were deported, he would follow her to her family’s residence where “you won’t have any protection”.
A spokesperson for Geo categorically denied the allegations detailed in the complaints. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
Jane Doe said Reyes and other staff also blocked her from accessing medical treatment for her epilepsy, even as her seizures became more severe and frequent during her time in detention, the complaint states. He repeatedly cornered Doe as she was en route to the medical center to receive treatment, and told her he would watch her on cameras while she was receiving medical evaluation. On one occasion, he told Doe he was “masturbating to her because he saw her body in medical condition when she was in an observation cell”, the complaint alleges.
“We feel so vulnerable, impotent,” Renteria-Gonzalez said.
After he reported that Reyes had sexually assaulted him, Renteria-Gonzalez said, Reyes burst into his housing unit and yelled, “You should have never put my name on it!”, in reference to the complaint to Ice. Renteria-Gonzalez said he was then placed in solitary confinement for two weeks.
After Renteria-Gonzalez reported harassment from another officer, his complaint was dismissed as “unsubstantiated” and the officer came back and told him: “They can’t do nothing to me,” according to the complaint.
Meanwhile, Garcia-Valenzuela said he was repeatedly sent to solitary confinement, he believes in retaliation for speaking out. He said staff at the detention center falsely reported that he had attempted self-harm, and needed to be placed under suicide watch, even though he had not in fact tried to hurt himself.
At one point, while Garcia-Valenzuela was in the medical isolation unit, officers delivered him a meal that consisted of a few potatoes and a few grains of cereal. There was no spoon provided, he said, and there was a note that instructed him to eat it “like a dog”.
Shortly after that incident, he said, a doctor at the facility suddenly – without explanation – stopped providing him access to medication for hand pain that had been exacerbated by his working in Reyes’s night-shift program.
He has avoided making further complaints. He tries not to speak to or make eye contact with staff, and avoids leaving his dorm. He limits trips to the restroom, he said. And rather than go to the cafeteria to warm up his food and eat, he takes his meals cold, and dines in bed. “I have to stay in the back-most corner of my bed, and eat there,” he said.
“I don’t ever feel at ease.”
Trans people in federal custody under threat
The allegations of abuse at SLIPC come at a time when the health and safety of trans people in federal custody is especially under threat, advocates say.
On the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump unveiled a flurry of executive actions targeting trans rights, rolling back anti-discrimination protections and mandating that people in immigration detention be placed in facilities based on their sex assigned at birth.
On 16 January – the last day of Joe Biden’s administration – Ice reported that 47 trans people were in Ice detention facilities around the country and that 69 had been arrested since the start of the fiscal year. As soon as Trump took office, the agency began omitting data on the number of transgender people in immigration detention from its reports.
“The government is essentially refusing to acknowledge the existence of trans people, let alone their humanity,” Decker of RFK Human Rights said.
Although a federal judge has blocked enforcement of Trump’s ban on transgender healthcare in federal prisons, Decker told the Guardian that inside detention centers, guards and staff have been emboldened to deny healthcare to trans clients, or retaliate against them for requesting care.
“I worry that the situation will only get worse from here for trans people,” she added.
The administration also closed the civil rights division of the DHS, as well as the ombudsman office overseeing immigration detention, arguing that the staff in these congressionally mandated divisions were “internal adversaries that slow down operations”.
The divisions included employees tasked with regularly visiting detention centers, investigating complaints and preparing reports for Congress. Detainees facing discrimination, neglect and abuse now have even fewer options for recourse, Decker said.
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It’s a scary, difficult moment to speak out, said Campos-Flores, a 37-year-old single parent of two children who came to the US from El Salvador when they were 11 years old.
During the seven months that Campos-Flores was detained at SLIPC, they would call their parents every day, just to reassure them that they were still alive. Periodically, they would beg their family and their lawyer to find ways to get them out. “I asked them to try to book me into another facility,” they said. “It was too much – just too much.”
In November 2024, they were deported – and immediately they felt a sense of relief to be freed from Reyes, they said. But they couldn’t stay away from their children, who are US citizens – so they crossed back into the US and were again apprehended.
They are currently detained at a different correctional facility in Louisiana, serving a criminal sentence for illegal re-entry. But after finishing their sentence, it is likely they will be transferred back to SLIPC before deportation – and face the same officers who harassed them, or ignored their complaints.
“But I have my 12-year-old son. He is also gay, he likes boys, and I don’t want him to experience anything like what I have experienced,” they said. They want to fight for his rights, too, they said.
Fox host tries to force him into a hole so she can bash him with bigotry. He doesn’t fall for it. Hugs.
tRump / Rubio are desperately trying to drum up a war with Venezuela over their oil. The US handpicked successor to Maduro admitted she would give up the rights to the oil reserves to the western oil companies first thing. Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia. That is why the US crippled the Venezuela economy in an attempt to get hat oil for our own. Maduro wants to use the money for the people, he wants to help the indigenous people, he wants to destroy the class structure that existed when he was growing up. The white people were treated better than the native brown people, he wanted to change that to where everyone is equal. People who are used to privilege react badly when everyone gets the same privilege. Hugs
This next video talks about the “young republicans” who are anywhere from 18 to 40 and these racist bigoted republicans have important positions in state and federal government. These republicans threatened to rape their enemies, and praised Hitler. Hugs
The clip below talks about Chuck Schumer and his actions before the shutdown and after. The democrats have a history of not standing up and taking action. The base of the party is glad the leaders are now taking concrete actions. Hugs
This last one is just for fun. It is a comedian who acts / talks like Cuomo to his face. Hugs
I am not trans even though I have been asked because of my super strong support of trans people. I have lost friends who wouldn’t accept trans people using a public bathroom with them even though all private functions happen in enclosed little stalls. I do have distant family members who are trans and fully supported by family. More important I can clearly see the same negative vile things said about trans people are the same things pushed against gay people when I was a struggling gay teen being pushed by the same groups on the same ideas of victimhood. They were mostly driven by hyper Christian Nationalist religious groups and those who demanded that traditions along with society never change from when they were young and happy. These same groups and feelings are in play against trans people. They are simply the homosexual aids scare of the 1980s. Just as I as a young gay person needed allies and support so do trans people today. Please give as much vocal and upfront support for trans people you can. It is easier to make progress as a society if we don’t have to undo hateful laws outlawing our very existence. Hugs
The video below is how Israel illegally plans to steal more land in the West Bank from the Palestinians to make a Palestinian state impossible. Israel is already breaking every thing they were required to do for the ceasefire. Also Israel has taken 1,500 Palestinian men and boys as hostages and are holding them illegally with no charges. So where is the world outrage over these hostages? Hugs
Publisher of the Infinite Jaz Substack, Jasper Nathaniel joins us to discuss Israel’s ongoing annexation of the West Bank. Live-streamed on September 10, 2025
Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times on Published in Op Eds
I had a difficult time reading the gut-wrenching accounts from the parents of gay children who are part of the Supreme Court case about conversion therapy bans and freedom of speech.
All claim their family relationships were seriously damaged by the widely discredited practice, and that their children were permanently scarred or even driven to suicide.
The case, Chiles vs. Salazar, arose from a 2019 Colorado law that outlaws conversion therapy, whose practitioners say they can change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms. The therapy is considered harmful and ineffective by mainstream medical and mental health organizations.
At least two dozen other states have similar laws on the books, all of them good-faith attempts to prevent the lasting harm that can result when a young person is told not just that they can change who they are, but that they should change because God wants them to. The laws were inspired by the horrific experiences of gay and transgender youths whose families and churches tried to change them.
The case was brought by Kayley Chiles, a licensed counselor and practicing Christian who believes, according to her attorneys, that “people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.”
Colorado, incidentally, has never charged Chiles or anyone else in connection with the 2019 law.
Chiles is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm known for its challenges to gay and transgender rights, including one brought to the Supreme Court in 2023 by Christian web designer Lorie Smith, who did not want to be forced to create a site for a gay wedding, even though no gay couple had ever approached her to do so. The Court’s conservative majority ruled in Smith’s favor. All three liberals dissented.
As for conversion therapy, counselors often encourage clients to blame their LGBTQ+ identities on trauma, abuse or their dysfunctional families. (If it can be changed, it can’t possibly be innate, right?)
In oral arguments, it appeared the conservative justices were inclined to accept Chiles’ claim that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy amounts to viewpoint discrimination, a violation of the 1st Amendment’s free speech guarantees. The liberal minority was more skeptical.
But proponents of the bans say there is a big difference between speech and conduct. They argue that a therapist’s attempt to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity amounts to conduct, and can rightfully be regulated by states, which, after all, lawfully impose conditions on all sorts of licensed professionals. (The bans, by the way, do not apply to ministers or unlicensed practitioners, and are generally not applicable to adults.)
Each competing brief whipsawed my emotions. The 1st Amendment is sacred in so many ways, and yet states have a critical interest in protecting the health and welfare of children. How to find a balance?
After reading the brief submitted by a group of 1st Amendment scholars, I was convinced the Colorado law should be ruled unconstitutional. As they wrote of Chiles, she doesn’t hook her clients to electrodes or give them hormones, as some practitioners of conversion therapy have done in the past. “The only thing she does is talk, and listen.”
Then I turned to the parents’ briefs.
Linda Robertson, an evangelical Christian mother of four, wrote that she was terrified when her 12-year-old son Ryan confided to her in 2001 that he was gay. “Crippling fear consumed me — it stole both my appetite and my sleep. My beautiful boy was in danger and I had to do everything possible to save him.”
Robertson’s search led her to “therapists, authors and entire organizations dedicated to helping kids like Ryan resist temptation and instead become who God intended them to be.”
Ryan was angry at first, then realized, his mother wrote, that “he didn’t want to end up in hell, or be disapproved of by his parents and his church family.” Their quest to make Ryan straight led them to “fervent prayer, scripture memorization, adjustments in our parenting strategies, conversion therapy based books, audio and video recordings and live conferences with titles like, ‘You Don’t Have to be Gay’ and ‘How to Prevent Homosexuality.’ ”
They also attended a conference put on by Exodus International, the “ex-gay” group that folded in 2013 after its former founder repudiated the group’s mission and proclaimed that gay people are loved by God.
After six years, Ryan was in despair. “He still didn’t feel attracted to girls; all he felt was completely alone, abandoned and needed the pain to stop,” his mother wrote. Worse, he felt that God would never accept him or love him. Ryan died at age 20 of a drug overdose after multiple suicide attempts.
As anyone with an ounce of common sense or compassion knows, such “therapy” is a recipe for shame, anguish and failure.
Yes, there are kids who question their sexuality, their gender identity or both, and they deserve to discuss their internal conflicts with competent mental health professionals. I can easily imagine a scenario where a teenager tells a therapist they think they’re gay or trans but don’t want to be.
The job of a therapist is to guide them through their confusion to self-acceptance, not tell them what the Bible says they should be.
If recent rulings are any guide, the Supreme Court is likely to overturn the Colorado conversion therapy ban.
This would mean, in essence, that a therapist has the right to inflict harm on a struggling child in the name of free speech.
What a smarmy arrogant little prick this kid is. First he is wrong on the founders, but that he is so cock sure of himself he can’t imagine being wrong. Christ is king, only he is king, and how can you represent Ohio if you are not Christian. He is clueless that a religious test for office is strictly prohibited by the constitution. But even after being correct the kid repeats his wrong version forcefully. Hugs
This is the same Bari Weiss that is rabidly anti-trans and a religious racist bigot. She is often used as a warrior to get the crimes against trans kids out, and Teldeb that used to come here and spew Weiss’s lies. No matter who many times I debunked and showed that everything Weiss had reported was lies and misinformation rabid trans haters like Teldeb kept pushing her lies. Because the truth doesn’t matter to them, making sure no child can be who they really are or fit the mold they demand children fit in. Now it is trans kids but as we have seen in the US they are coming for every not straight cis kid demanding they fit into the regressive world they demand everyone live in. Weiss is also a Jewish person who is an Islamophobe. She supports the genocide in Gaza. Hugs
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.
If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:
Following the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) co-founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, there’s been significant posthumous discussion about who he was and what he left behind. President Trump and the Republican Party have described him as a martyr, making his funeral into a 200,000-person event comparable to those of deceased presidents, while calling for retribution against the “radical left” and trans people, despite the fact that the man who killed him is cisgender and his political affiliation is unclear.
Some liberals have mourned Kirk, casting him as a champion of civil dialogue. Meanwhile, critics of his often hateful beliefs have faced repercussions, with retaliatory firings of educators, writers and reporters.
Given the volume of discussion about Kirk and his legacy surrounding LGBTQ issues, Uncloseted Media decided to assemble the receipts. Here’s a track record of Kirk and TPUSA’s actions and statements on the queer community.
Oct. 4, 2016
TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk publishes a manifesto that outlines the group’s vision and political strategy, where he complains that “personal and overall freedom” are being lost in “exchange for ‘micro’ freedoms like taxpayer-funded contraception and gay marriage.”
He writes that TPUSA’s strategy is inspired by what he describes as the LGBT movement:
“We are using the same message delivery methods and many of the same organizing tactics. They use social media, rallies, and pop-culture messaging, just like we do. Despite our very different agendas, there is no question we have adapted our movements into the times in which we live.”
Kirk also references Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, who has likened being a conservative graduate student on campus today to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.
Nov. 21, 2016
Screenshot of Professor Watchlist.
TPUSA launches the Professor Watchlist, a database cataloging “anti-conservative” college professors. Many targeted professors later face harassment. A gay professor says that when they were placed on the watchlist, they began receiving anti-LGBTQ emails on their work account. And a tenured professor at the University of Florida who was placed on the watchlist and tagged with sharing a “racial ideology” says that all four professors at her university who are on the watchlist are either a person of color or someone who identifies as LGBTQ.
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Jan. 25, 2017
TPUSA co-hosts an event with College Republicans at CU Boulder called “Why Ugly People Hate Me.” The event features far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was in the middle of his Dangerous Faggot Tour which challenged “political correctness” on college campuses. Yiannopoulos claims to be an “ex-gay,” born-again Christian who “demoted” his husband to “housemate.”
April 25, 2018
Kirk at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
A Huffington Post report finds that Shialee Grooman, then TPUSA’s national field director, had a long history of racist and homophobic posts, including one that read, “Okay. All of you are f*ggots.” In a statement to HuffPost, Kirk says Grooman is a “former employee,” and TPUSA issues a company-wide memo announcing social media background checks and offers to assist employees in making their social media posts less public.
Nov. 22, 2019
At a TPUSA event called “Culture War” in Florida, Kirk addresses a heckler who accuses him of betraying conservatism by tolerating gay and transgender individuals and warns of a slippery slope to normalizing pedophilia. Kirk tweets, “I believe marriage is one man one woman biblically” but goes on to say that he doesn’t think gay people should be excluded from the conservative movement.
Sept. 14, 2020
TPUSA launches TPUSA LIVE, a new media hub that they say provides “daily conservative content” that includes “hot takes, opinions, and reactions to breaking news.”
Other articles include transphobic headlines inspired by conspiracy theories that trans women are actually male creeps trying to invade women’s spaces. Some headlines include:
TPUSA launches the School Board Watchlist, modeled after their Professor Watchlist, to monitor high school officials they deem too progressive. The watchlist now seems to be defunct.
Oct. 14, 2021
Kirk publishes an op-ed titled “On Sexual Anarchy” that is rife with anti-LGBTQ animus. He writes:
“The facts that there are only two genders; that transgenderism and gender ‘fluidity’ are lies that hurt people and abuse kids; and that God’s good, loving, and joyful ideal for our lives is for a man and woman to be joined in a lifelong marriage covenant—these are all under official opprobrium in 2021.”
Feb. 18, 2022
A University of South Carolina student posts screenshots of racist and homophobic messages from two group chats affiliated with the school’s TPUSA chapter. The president of the chapter later releases a video apology, saying that “these remarks have no place being made in our organization,” though this video would later be taken down.
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April 8, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk says: “[Gay people] are not happy just having marriage. Instead, they now want to corrupt your children.”
In another episode the following week, Kirk falsely links trans people to inflation.
“There’s a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue. You say, ‘Charlie, come on. They couldn’t be further apart.’ No, they’re exactly the same. They’re the same in this aspect—when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn’t you also believe that you could print wealth?”
June 2022
Drew Hernandez, host of TPUSA FRONTLINE on YouTube, spends Pride Month calling LGBTQ people “mentally ill” and dubs it “groomer month.” Hernandez also says parents who bring their children to Pride events should be arrested. Months later, YouTube would remove the videos.
July 6, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk rejects a previous perspective he held: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
Oct. 12, 2022
The Student Government Association at Maryland’s Towson University formally condemns the university’s TPUSA chapter after leaked messages show the group’s members allegedly using racist, homophobic and ableist slurs. Some of the messages refer to Pride Month as “f*ggot month” and the monkeypox outbreak as the “f*ggot virus.”
Feb. 17, 2023
Discussing trans women in women’s bathrooms, Kirk says, “These people are sick. … I blame the decline of American men. … Someone should’ve just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s.” Journalist Erin Reed, whose reporting focuses on the trans community, responds to Kirk’s remarks by saying he is “openly calling for the lynching of transgender individuals.”
May 28, 2023
Kirk defends TPUSA’s partnership with Shawn Bergstrand, a registered sex offender who served time in federal prison for attempted “coercion and enticement” after trying to persuade “a minor female” to “engage in sexual activity.”
He defends Bergstrand on X and simultaneously attacks Target for selling Pride merchandise: “I’m told … that he’s a nice person who did something wrong over a decade ago, and unlike Target, he repented and the experience led him to his faith. Good for him. That’s the Gospel.”
Sept. 11, 2023
Screenshot of 2023 speech.
In a speech, Kirk describes transgender people as a “throbbing middle finger to God” and trans swimmer Lia Thomas as “an abomination to God.”
Oct. 11, 2023
David Boyles, an instructor at Arizona State University, posts a photo of his injuries on Instagram. Photo courtesy of David Boyles.
A TPUSA-affiliated crew assault David Boyles, a queer Arizona State University professor who teaches English and is a co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona. The crew shouts accusations about drag shows and sexuality, “accusing [him] personally of pedophilia and hating America,” and ultimately shove him to the ground after he tries to block their camera from recording. Campus police say they investigated the interaction as a “potential bias or prejudicially motivated incident.” Both suspects would plead guilty in court. The professor had been featured on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist in part for teaching an LGBTQ-themed class on pop culture and politics.
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March 20, 2024
In a debate, Kirk says, “I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, but if you ask me do I have hate in my heart for somebody that doesn’t choose the [heteronormative] lifestyle … of course not.”
April 1, 2024
Kirk calls for gender-affirming clinics to be banned: “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
June 6, 2024
Trump has spoken at multiple TPUSA events through the years. Trump appears here at the 2019 TPUSA Teen Student Action Summit. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Trump appears at a TPUSA event, signaling collaboration with Kirk’s organization for his second presidential campaign, which was centered around anti-trans ads. Trump delegates many campaign responsibilities to Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of TPUSA. Trump tells the crowd, “Arizona is being turned into a dumping ground for the dungeons of the third world.”
June 8, 2024
Speaking on a podcast, Kirk attacks Ms. Rachel for quoting “love your neighbor” to defend Pride celebrations on “Songs for Littles,” her YouTube series that uses music and games to help toddlers develop language and social skills.
“Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours. … Leviticus 18 [says] that ‘thou shall lay with another man, shall be stoned to death.’ … Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
When opining about how Christians should act towards gay people, Kirk calls homosexuality an “error” and equates it to an addiction: “How do you love somebody? You love them so much to correct their error. … If you meet an alcoholic or you meet a drug addict, do you affirm their struggle? No! You say, ‘You’re better than this, let’s get you free from that.’”
When speaking about LGBTQ rights advocates, Kirk says, “First, they wanted you to affirm, and then they wanted you to celebrate and then they wanted you to participate. And if you don’t, they are willing to destroy your life.”
Oct. 28, 2024
Kirk wears a T-shirt with the slogan “xy = man” at an election rally in Arizona, referencing that sex and gender are biological and insinuating that trans people don’t exist.
Jan. 10, 2025
TPUSA and The Daily Wire release Identity Crisis, a documentary that cherry picks stories from detransitioners and parents fighting to protect children from gender ideology. The main expert in the documentary is Dr. Drew Pinsky, a TV personality who is not a gender specialist.
March 3, 2025
Kirk speaks at the 2025 TPUSA Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Texas. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
When asked by a gay conservative college student for advice, Kirk responds, “You are a complete human being. … We act as if the most important part of your identity is what you do in the bedroom. It doesn’t mean that much to me. If you asked from a perspective as a Christian, I don’t agree with that lifestyle.”
Aug. 25, 2025
“While we’re talking about flags, we should work to overturn every conviction for those arrested, fined, or otherwise harassed for the ‘hate crime’ of doing donuts over Pride flags painted on public streets,” Kirk writes on X, referencing a teenager who was arrested in St. Petersburg for doing circular “doughnut-burnouts” on a rainbow pride mural.
In a separate post, Kirk writes that “it should be legal to burn a rainbow or BLM flag in public.”
Sept. 10, 2025
Charlie Kirk is shot and killed while speaking at a TPUSA event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In the moments leading up to his death, Kirk is speaking about gun violence.
The mainstream media spreads disinformation based on falseleaks from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that say the shooter had “expressions of transgender and anti-fascist ideology” written on the bullets.
Trans hate has risen since Kirk’s death, and trans students unaffiliated with the shooting have been doxxed and harassed.
“[People online] were asking for my class schedule,” Simone Goodheart, a trans woman and UVU alum, told Uncloseted Media. “A few of them made awful comments about my appearance and who I am as a person.”
Sept. 12, 2025
Kirk’s widow, Erika, issues a statement at the TPUSA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, signaling an escalation of tension:
“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country, and this world. … You have no idea the fire you’ve ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
Two weeks after Kirk’s assassination, a Texas man faces charges for threatening to open fire at the Abilene Pride Parade as “revenge” for Kirk’s death. In Facebook messages, he urges a friend to “lock and load and pay them back” and suggests they go “hunting fairies.” The FBI says his threats were targeted toward Pride participants.
Sept. 30, 2025
TPUSA returns to Utah for the first time since Kirk’s death to host a panel at Utah State University.
The panel discusses political tolerance. Jason Chaffetz, a former Utah State Representative, says, “I worry that we’re putting too much tolerance. You do not need a man with junk in a woman’s bathroom. End of story.”
When discussing LGBTQ allies who lit up the iconic Brigham Young University’s “Y” in the color of the trans flag, the moderator calls it “some of that evil that’s just seeping in throughout the state.”
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‘It is for my daughter and my family that I have endured everything that I have in this detention facility for the past 28 months.’ Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian
A Google Maps screenshot of the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, Louisiana.
Photograph: Google MapsA spokesperson for Geo categorically denied the allegations detailed in the complaints.
Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
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