Connect with us

An Open Letter To All LGBT Students Of The Anoka-Hennepin School District

Published

on

Dear LGBT Students of the Anoka-Hennepin School District:

This letter will help to clarify your rights, and also will instruct you on how to protect yourselves against those who mistakenly believe they can deprive you of your rights.

It is urgently important for you as LGBTQ students to understand that under the “No establishment of religion” clause of the United States Constitution, no religious superstition, hate, bullying non-acceptance of your gayness or any other religious stricture can be forced on you by means of any government entity including your public schools.

Deplorably, your public schools Superintendent has caved to many of the demands of certain adult, theocratic anti-gay bullies. If these anti-gay bullies, these adult theocrats, want their children to be raised in a religious environment hostile to LGBT human beings, then they have to send their children to anti-gay religious schools, not to public schools. They have no constitutional right — none whatsoever — to bully your public school administration into imposing a religiously-motivated anti-gay bigotry onto you. By contrast, you do have a right to a safe public school learning environment; one in which you may at times say “I am an out, proud gay student,” and never be harassed or assaulted for having said it.

The controlling legal standard for public school students’ free speech rights is that if something you say is not disruptive to the learning environment, you can not be stopped from saying it. The basis for teaching and learning in a public school is scholarly method and science, not the Bible and even more particularly not a nasty anti-gay bigot’s misinterpretation of the Bible. Ergo, for you sometimes to say “I am an out, proud gay student” is not disruptive of a public school learning setting, but for somebody to say “God hates fags,” – or anything that expresses that concept – however “polite” the language – is disruptive of and inappropriate to the public school learning environment and your right to a fear-free public school setting. If anti-gay bullying theocrats want for their children to be in school environments where people may say “God hates fags,” they have to send their children to that particular kind of religious school.

To emphasize the point that science, not anti-gay bigotry is the basis for teaching in public schools, I am now calling your attention to the booklet Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation and Youth. That booklet was produced by major medical and professional associations to educate school administrators, teachers and personnel and to counter the harmful effects of anti-gay bigotry. The organizations that endorsed this booklet are — get ready, this is a long list — the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Counseling Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Psychological Association, the American School Counselor Association, the American School Health Association, the Interfaith Alliance Foundation, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of Social Workers, the National Education Association and the School Social Work Association of America. The American Medical Association is not on that list, but has a policy firmly against all forms of anti-gay bigotry and discrimination.

Hateful anti-gay bigots — including those who abuse God and/or Jesus as excuses for their repugnant bigotry — do not know better than the collective minds of all of those professional medical, science and educational organizations what is healthy for school communities in the 21st century. Obnoxious, anti-gay bigot pigs have no basis in law for torturing you or for pressuring for you to be tortured in public school settings.

I am now going to name some of the theocratic bullies that have been attempting to transmogrify your public school lives as LGBT students into living hells. The professional anti-gay bigot Tom Prichard of the so-called Minnesota Family Council has a history of telling lies about gay human beings. The MFC website makes clear that Prichard is gay bashing on the basis of religious motivations. A tab on his site’s homepage is labeled “Pastors” and then there are pages devoted to what these filthy anti-gay bigots have the nerve to call “The Truth Project.”

“The Truth Project” aims to shove anti-gay bigots’ uniquely hateful interpretation of the Bible down innocent gay victims’ throats. It is a product of the anti-gay hate group “Focus on the Family,” whose executive Tom Minnery was called out by Senator Al Franken for falsifying evidence when testifying against the inalienable rights of gay Americans. Again, the public school standard for determining “truth” is scholarship and science, not the Bible. This is not to say that there are not huge numbers of religious people, including Christians of course, fully accepting of LGBTers and supportive of their equality. (Here is a list of 236 gay-welcoming churches in Minnesota).  But it is to say that the cowardly anti-gay bigots hiding their hate behind their veils of phony and fraudulent religious excuses have no constitutional right to impose – or to cause to be imposed — a theocratic anti-gay regime on you through and in your public schools. Another shameless, lying anti-gay theocratic bigot who has been trying to make your lives hell in Minnesota is Barb Anderson, also of the so-called Minnesota Family Council.  These and other bullying, lying, anti-gay theocrats may have cowed your irresponsible school superintendent, but you must not be afraid of them because the Constitution is on your side against the religiously-motivated, mean-spirited, anti-gay tyranny they want to impose on you.

A recent, disturbing article in Rolling Stone magazine – School of Hate; One Town’s War on Gay Teens – makes clear that you have not been adequately instructed on how to gather evidence for legal actions against anti-gay bullies and school administrators who fail sufficiently to protect you against anti-gay bullies.

Every single time you are a victim of anti-gay verbal harassment or of a hate-motivated physical attack, you must create a written record of the harassment and/or of the attack, who you reported it to and what they did about it. If school officials have not taken measures adequate to stopping a anti-gay tormentor from tormenting you, then you must create a written record of your complaint about the tormentor and of the official’s response. You can create a useful record with letters. Make copies of the letters with your complaints to school officials. Mail one copy of each letter to yourself. Keep that letter mailed to yourself inside its sealed envelope. The Post Office cancellation stamp on the unopened envelope is your legally-valid documentation of the date you sent the letter.

If you are having ongoing problems with anti-gay bullying, you must create as thorough and detailed as possible a record of the bullying and of school officials’ inadequate responses. Such a detailed record with names, dates and times will help you to win eventual court cases against your tormentors and their enablers in the public school system. When school officials see that LGBT students are organized and empowered against bullying in this way, they will become far less likely to cave to the anti-gay demands of bullying adult theocrats. The school officials will see that their dereliction of duty to uphold your constitutional rights is about to cost them money. Here, you can read of a bullied gay student awarded $100,000 by a court. Here, you can read of a school having to pay $225,000 for not doing enough to stop bullying.  There have been dozens, and dozens, and dozens of these cases. Your public school officials will see that you have the knowledge and the evidence to go to a competent school bullying attorney and to say “This public school is not adequately protecting me. Here is the record of all the bad things that have happened to me in this public school. Will you represent me in a lawsuit against the school?”  What wins money in lawsuits against public schools is the fact that bullied students and/or their parents or guardians have let school administrators know about the bullying, yet the administrators have not done enough to protect the victims. That is what will make creating a thorough record so empowering for you as an LGBT student in a public school.

Additionally, cowardly theocratic anti-gay bullies will try to make you feel isolated and alone, without support. But they are not going to succeed in torturing LGBT public school students that way any longer in the United States. You have human rights supporters all over the country and the world. Your human rights supporters will leap into action in your defense if bullying theocrats continue to try to make your lives hell in the Anoka-Hennepin School District. If you are experiencing anti-gay bullying in those schools, and school officials are not adequately protecting you, contact me with the story. I will expose your tormentors to the world and activate the human rights community nationwide on your behalf and in your defense.

Image: A Gay-Straight Alliance school bus from Seattle Pride, 2008. By jglsongs.

 

New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

 


Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Trump Team Pushing ‘Utter Propaganda’ on Deportations to Create ‘Climate of Fear’: Experts

Published

6 hours ago

on

January 24, 2025

By

The Trump administration’s long-promised “largest mass deportation operation” in U.S. history, which was announced to begin “on day one,” has so far resulted in what some experts and immigration advocates suggest are an average number to mild increase in arrests and deportations. Activists, experts, and journalists are working to provide context to the White House’s claims of its own effectiveness.

“The White House said immigration agents have arrested 538 undocumented immigrants with criminal records and deported ‘hundreds’ more,” The Washington Post reported Friday. “Those numbers, if accurate, would be relatively modest for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge operations — a possible indication that the Trump administration’s show of force has so far outpaced the government’s capacity to deliver on the president’s lofty goals.”

Ahead of his inauguration on Monday, the media was awash with reports that President Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would start Tuesday, the day after he was sworn into office, and one day after it was originally supposed to. Chicago was identified in reports as the first city to be targeted by Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities.

“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan said, according to the BBC. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines.”

RELATED: ‘Hunting Grounds’: Trump Cancels Biden Ban on ICE Arrests at Schools, Churches, Hospitals

But Homan, who served as acting director of ICE during Trump’s first administration, then served up a curious claim: “Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.” He went on to suggest that the “leaked” Chicago details could be putting the safety of federal agents at risk.

“What was leaked in Chicago was more specific, what was happening, and that raises officer safety concern,” Homan said, according to The Hill.

Homan on Fox News had promised a “big raid” across the country, BBC had reported, and “has previously said Chicago will be ‘ground zero’ for the mass deportations.”

The mass arrests and deportations, despite appearing to be average, were heralded by the media.

Wednesday night, Fox News host Jesse Watters posted video to his Facebook page, declaring, “FOX NEWS ALERT: The largest mass deportation operation in American history is underway, and Primetime has exclusive photos of ICE’s first arrests.”

READ MORE: ‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

Numerous media outlets blared that the Trump administration on Thursday arrested 538 undocumented immigrants.

And yet, according to a former Capitol Hill staffer, President Joe Biden’s average was often higher.

The White House on Friday posted an image to social media, declaring, “Deportation Flights Have Begun.”

Immigration experts, activists, and journalists pushed back hard.

“Deportation flights were taking place under Biden too. What’s new is the military aircraft,” noted The Bulwark’s Sam Stein. CNN’s Brian Stelter added, “Also new: The PR strategy.”

PR appears to be a major focus.

The Washington Examiner’s DHS reporter, Anna Giaritelli, quickly corrected the record on the White House’s above social media post: “DHS official authorized to speak with media said this is not a deportation flight — these are roughly 80 Guatemalans who were arrested AT the southern border recently and are being REPATRIATED. That is legally not a deportation.”

Immigration activist Thomas Cartwright, who, according to The Washington Post “tracks ICE deportations for the immigrant advocacy group Witness at the Border,” pointed to this data, and also challenged the White House’s narrative.

“Theater of the absurd,” he charged. “The only thing new about this is subjecting people to transport on a cargo plane rather than charter and the LOWER number of people on the plane – 75-80 compared to the average for ICE deportation flights to Guatemala of 125. In 2024 there were 508 deportation flights to Guatemala and in 2020 – 2023: 247, 184, 369, and 470, respectively. The 508 in 2024 represents just under an average of 10 deportation flights per week to Guatemala. Counting this flight there have been only 5 this week through Thursday.”

Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, also responded to the White House’s post: “This is utter propaganda and you have to make sure not to fall for it. There were dozens of deportation flights every single week over the last year and before that. Deportation flights never stopped. If they try to claim otherwise, they are lying to the American people.”

Reichlin-Melnick also blasted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in response to another of her posts on immigration. “Are these people seriously trying to suggest the deportation flights have not already been going on? They’re lying to you. The Biden administration had already ramped up deportations from the border to a higher level than it was under the Trump admin.”

And pointing to Cartwright’s data, he noted, “In 2024, ICE carried out an average of 4.27 deportation flights per day (which includes weekends and holidays) The normal weekday total was above 6 deportation flights a day, per @thcartwright. Deportation flights never stopped. This is propaganda.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times’ Hamed Aleaziz on Friday afternoon told MSNBC that the Trump administration is really going “on the offensive when it comes to putting out pictures of ICE deportations from the White House Twitter account, from Tom Holman being on several new spots, talking about deportations, it is front and center. And I think it’s an effort to show that President Trump is fulfilling this promise of mass deportations.”

He says their goal is they “want people to be uncomfortable. They want there to be a climate of fear. And ultimately, maybe people will decide that they want to leave this country voluntarily?”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

 

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

Published

12 hours ago

on

January 24, 2025

By

President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency during a visit to Hurricane Helene-damaged parts of North Carolina on Friday, announcing he is planning on reforming or “getting rid of FEMA,” and proposed an unprecedented move to condition disaster relief on the passage of a voter ID law by California’s lawmakers, “as a start.” Trump’s trip, which will include travel to California later Friday, appears designed to target the emergency management agency, which he has been criticizing for months.

In what appeared to be scripted remarks, Trump later elaborated that he would “sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think frankly, FEMA’s not good. I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and, uh, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time.”

“Calling FEMA and then FEMA gets here and they don’t know the area,” Trump claimed. “They’ve never been to the area and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about, they wanna bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have,” he alleged.

“FEMA turned out to be a a disaster. And you could go back a long way, you could go back to Louisiana, you could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. And it turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it. I think we’re gonna recommend that FEMA go away. And we pay directly and we pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it.”

RELATED: Is Trump Using Project 2025 to Eliminate FEMA?

In his wide-ranging remarks, President Trump also claimed that “rather than going through FEMA,” disaster relief aid to California and North Carolina “will go through us,” meaning, through his administration. FEMA is a federal government agency under the wide umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The president nominates the HHS Secretary, a cabinet level official, and the FEMA administrator.

And Trump appeared to say that he will assign Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley to manage financial aid to North Carolina, removing FEMA from the state.

“Trump also said FEMA would not be involved in further relief efforts and instead suggested that Whatley, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D), and a trio of Republican House members would be working with the White House directly because the agency ‘hasn’t done the job,'” The Independent reported.

“I wanna see two things in Los Angeles,” Trump also told reporters late Friday morning, “voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state. Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California ever has ever seen.”

“I want the water to come down and come down to Los Angeles and also go out to all the farm land that’s barren and dry,” Trump claimed. This week the President appeared to suggest that water runs only north to south.

READ MORE: Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

“So, I want two things,” Trump repeated, “I want voter ID for the people of California. They all want it. Right now you have no, you don’t have voter ID. People want to have to voter identification. You wanna have proof of citizenship. Ideally, you have one-day voting, but I just want voter ID to start, and I want the water to be released, and they’re gonna get a lot of help from the U.S.”

Trump later responded to a reporter’s question about his remarks on ending FEMA, calling the agency “a very big disappointment” that costs “a tremendous amount of money.” He alleged, “they end up in arguments if they’re fighting, all the time over who does what, it’s just it’s just not a good system.”

“I think it’s, I think when there’s a, uh, when there’s a problem with the state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. That’s what we have states for. They take care of problems, and a government can handle something very quickly,” Trump said, appearing to not mention the scope of FEMA’s actions, responsibilities, and resources.

Jordan Weissmann, reporter for Yahoo Finance covering federal agencies, offers this explanation on California water: “The water issue Trump is fixated on doesn’t really have anything to do with the wildfires. It’s a fight between Central Valley farmers and Northern California farmers and environmentalists about who gets more fresh water.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s J6 Pardons Are ‘High Crime’ and ‘Abuse of Power’ Legal Expert Says

 

Image: Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Franklin Graham in North Carolina Friday, via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

Published

14 hours ago

on

January 24, 2025

By

President Donald Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark isn’t going over well with some Danes, including one of Denmark’s politicians who used vulgarity to express his opposition earlier this week, and is now citing a century-long historical record to issue a warning to Greenlanders on America’s refusal to grant full voting rights to its citizens in U.S. territories.

Anders Vistisen, a Danish Member of the European Parliament, reminded Trump earlier this week that “Greenland has been part of the Danish Kingdom for 800 years,” and “is not for sale.”

“Let me put it in words you might understand: Mr. Trump. f*** off,” Vistisen said.

Thursday night on CNN, Vistisen, a member of a right wing populist party, expanded his battle against Trump’s aspiration to annex Greenland.

READ MORE: Trump’s J6 Pardons Are ‘High Crime’ and ‘Abuse of Power’ Legal Expert Says

Addressing what he called the “argument that America can make a great deal,” an apparent reference to Donald Trump, Vistisen said, “we actually have some historical precedence for this. A hundred years ago we sold you what you call the U.S. Virgin Islands. Today, that territory still doesn’t have voting rights for your presidential elections.”

“That place doesn’t have a voting member of your parliament, the Congress — or the House of Representatives, and the Senate, and when I visited, when we had the hundred years commemoration, there was not a great lot of enthusiasm about the way the U.S. is handling that.”

“So I think if the Greenlandic people are looking carefully at this and they are looking on the U.S. overseas territories,” Vistisen continued, “looking at how Indigenous people are treated in the U.S., it’s very hard to make a compelling argument that they will have a better deal from the United States than what they have within the Danish realm, the kingdom of Denmark, where they have full voting rights in the Danish parliament are actually are overrepresented, and as you clearly stated, they have a very beneficial agreement, economically with Denmark.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a former Bush 43 White House speechwriter, responded to Vistisen’s remarks.

“In 1917, Denmark (legally neutral but sympathetic to the Allies) sold the [Virgin] islands to the USA to prevent Germany from seizing them for a submarine base. Also, the islands were economically desperate, and war-isolated Denmark could not aid them. As part of the deal, the US guaranteed Danish sovereignty over Greenland. Another reason that seizing Greenland would be an act of US bad faith,” Frum wrote.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Is Trump Using Project 2025 to Eliminate FEMA?

 

Image by Elekes Andor via Wikimedia Commons and a CC license

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.