For members of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, the tirade of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills upending state legislatures is a dangerous reaction to what they’ve worked so hard to build: visibility and safety for LGBTQ students. Gathered in the student union at the University of New Orleans, six members of the alliance described what it’s like to grow up queer in southern Louisiana — and then face down legislation that seems to attack their very right to exist at school.
Jackson Downey, a senior, is the point person for LGBTQ rights at the high-school. He moved across the country to find a safer learning environment after being subject to homophobic attacks in middle and high school. Benjamin Franklin High, unlike other schools Downey has attended, has diversity and inclusion policy. However, LGBTQ students must regularly push administrators to implement these policies. Downey is the one administrators turn to when they have questions about dead names and gender-neutral bathrooms. State lawmakers are now targeting LGBTQ teachers and students with “Don’t Say Gay and Trans” legislation that threatens to undo the school’s progress.
“To fight so hard to have my own rights [at school], and then to see them announce those bills, and then watch those bills get passed,” Downey said, their voice rising. “It brought me back to being 12 years old, realizing I have a crush on my best friend and thinking ‘God’s going to hate me for the rest of my life. There’s nothing left for me.’”
Anti-racist, LGBTQ youth from all over the country are organizing in school corridors and online to resist Republican attempts at banning gender-affirming healthcare and to silence any discussion about racism and LGBTQ identities within public schools. The most notorious “Don’t Say Gay and Trans” bill passed into law in Florida and is being challengedCourt by queer students. Louisiana introduced a copycat bill along with one targeting trans athletes. passed the Louisiana SenateBenjamin Franklin High activists organized a dramatic school walkout that saw the students and teachers of the school beheaded. headlinesAll across the state
“It finally reignited the spark in myself, like once the legislation hit,” said Grayson Swearingen, a junior at Benjamin Franklin High. “Because I had already built up this really angry tiredness at everything happening in Franklin, and once I saw it in the news, it just made me so angry, and I literally came to lunch and sat down, and I went, ‘Can somebody please help me organize a protest?’”
Students also meet online to share strategies and link to queer books and antiracist essays that conservative parents have banned. school libraries nationwideReagan Peters, a senior organizer, stated that this is the case. Peters-Roussell created the Better Future Program, which offers a vast online community. “liberation library”You can download social justice literature free of charge. For students in multiple states, sharing books is about both knowledge and solidarity.
“My school currently, they aren’t banning any books, and we are really lucky about that,” Peters-Roussell told Truthout. “But I know we have books banned at other schools in our resources.”
Students are also are demanding — and even building — curriculums examining Black and LGBTQ history that would be the explicit targets of legislation attacking queer visibility and “critical race theory,” the right-wing bogeyman that wrongly conflates history class with “Marxist indoctrination.” Meanwhile, the LGBTQ youth advocacy group Trevor Project reports that 94 percent of young LGBTQ people say “recent politics” negatively impacted their mental health.
In what civil rights groups call an “unprecedented” move, Republican state lawmakers in Louisiana’s House resurrected failed legislationLast week, that would be further than Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and ban discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-8. Civil rights groups oppose the bill would silence LGBTQ educatorsWhile making queer students invisible, they prevent adults from giving guidance if a bully is throwing insults or answering any questions about LGBTQ identities. LGBTQ teachers are already present in the South and all across the country. facing reprimandFor doing exactly that.
“Bills like Louisiana’s ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ legislation are a shameful attack on students who are already struggling with the weight of discrimination and isolation,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, in a statement.
Many Benjamin Franklin High students reported that they have been exposed to homophobic, transphobic, and racist language from their classmates, especially if they were gay in middle school. Swearingen and another Benjamin Franklin student, Croix Hill, have fond memories of gay teachers in middle school — the same teachers targeted by the “Don’t’ Say Gay” bill that opponents argue is an implicit double standard for queer and straight teachers. After being the first transgender student in his school, Swearingen needed an adult to talk with. Hill remembers a choir teacher who taught them that homophobic jokes hurt real people. This lesson helped Hill avoid becoming homophobic around others and kept him from becoming a bisexual in high school.
“It’s so nice to be able to talk to somebody about those sorts of things and understand it and to be exposed to like, you know, queerness,” said Hill, who previously attended a private school where LGBTQ identity was rarely discussed. “It’s really important, I think for children, because I literally didn’t know what being gay was.”
Many LGBTQ people will remember teachers who challenged homophobia, made them feel safe at school, and these educators are now being attacked. Republicans are implying, if not saying directly, that LGBTQ teachers and “extremists” are “grooming” children, an age-old and hateful trope about adults preying on young people.
The argument that LGBTQ adults are implicitly less dangerous than straight adults is very homophobic. But conspiracy theories are now central to GOP rhetoric. Republicans are following in the footsteps former President Donald Trump by feeding fears about changing demographics. They are making public schools where children from different backgrounds and identities blend into ideological battlegrounds, with the support of the right-wing press. At the heart of this so-called “parental rights” movement is a desire to undermine and privatize public education that traces its roots to conservative backlash against the desegregation of public schools decades ago.
“They want to keep it under wraps, people don’t want to see queer joy and trans joy,” said Benjamin Franklin High sophomore Vale Tesch. “Trans joy is resistance.”
Naika Belizaire (an organizer and senior graduating from Advanced Technologies Academy in Las Vegas) is no stranger to the fight. Belizaire recalls a history teacher who skipped over the Haitian revolution and said “nobody cares” about the first successful rebellionProtest the trans-Atlantic slave trading. Belizaire was disciplined for wearing an African-American hairstyle to school by a different teacher. However, she managed to avoid disciplinary action by protesting against the dress code. These experiences inspired Belizaire, who now confronts anti-Black racism in education. Belizaire, 16 years old, asked the school to offer a Black history class or at the very least lessons from a variety of perspectives. But administrators refused to listen.
“I basically talked to my principal, and although he was very against it at first, I convinced him by creating a petition, rallying potential teachers to teach the class, and drafting a syllabus,” Belizaire said in an interview. “He can’t say ‘no’ if I have everything ready.”
The proposal for a Black history course quickly drew ire from conservative parents who had been fed a right-wing media diet that promoted hysteria over critical racism. School board meetings were held in Nevada and across the nation. fillingAnxious MAGA supporters, who believe that their children should be taught advanced legal theory regarding systemic racism, were present. At a board meeting Belizaire attended, white parents essentially argued for school segregation, with one father saying he refused to send his son to a school that “puts down” white people. Belizaire said parents had a complete misconception of Black history, but some people don’t want to learn about Black history in the first place.
“For some reason Black history was equivalent to critical race theory in their minds,” Belizaire said. “It got a little extreme at parts, but we fight through every day to make sure our voices are heard and our movement is heard.”
Belizaire’s school provided a course on Black history for the first time this year, and Belizaire was wrapping up the class ahead of graduation when reached for an interview last week. Belizaire worked with State Sen. Dina Naal to successfully pass this exam. CROWN Act, which prohibits discrimination of Black and Brown students who sport natural hairstyles such as afros. Nevada’s governor signed the bill last year, and advocates are pushing similar legislation in Louisiana, Congress and across the country. Belizaire will be organizing a mentorship this summer. and restorative justice programFor girls and women of color
New Orleans’ Gender and Sexuality Alliance has wrapped up a fundraiser, raising $1,000 to buy a chest binder for any student who needs one. The students quickly point out that Benjamin Franklin High is safer and better funded than other schools in Southern Louisiana, despite some issues with teachers and a dearth of accommodations. Roughly half the student body and a number of teachers joined their walkout against the anti-LGBTQ bills in the statehouse, and while homophobic and transphobic comments can still be heard in the halls, such talk is generally frowned upon by a majority of students in one of the city’s most diverse schools.
Students said that they are likely to have it easier than previous generations. The HIV/AIDS crisis has changed significantly and gay marriage is legal. The advancement of LGBTQ rights and visibility is rapid, especially online. This is likely why conservatives are lashing out at queer students, teachers, and staff. But the anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans legislation in Louisiana and Florida and elsewhere is proof that hard-won right can be taken away even if they fail to pass. eventually struck down in court. LGBTQ students realize they must fight for these rights with everything they’ve got, just like the generations before them.
“I want to be an animator; I didn’t want to be an activist, but I have to fight for my rights,” Swearingen said. “I want to be a creator, but I have to fight for my right to create.”
