School Board Zaps Protections for LGBTQ Kids Despite Death/Rape Threats

This is how it happens. This is nationwide.

A student [was] overheard saying he was going to ‘bring his guns to school and line up all the [anti-transgender slur] outside and shoot them.’ A different student was heard saying, ‘We should kill all [anti-gay slur]. We should lock them in the school and set fire to it so we can watch them all burn.’

LGBTQ students and teachers in Lander, Wyoming used to have a powerful tool to protect them against bullying and discrimination, which they say are bad and getting worse. They lost that tool in this year’s homophobic/transphobic backlash and they’re likely not getting it back, even though frightened students at the middle and high schools are staging walkouts.

This is how it happens.

You haven’t read this story. It only made local news. I’m telling you about it because my news feeds are packed with local stories just like this one. I want you to know what’s going on across the nation.

Being LGBTQ in Wyoming can be damn tough

Wyoming friends tell me the state’s famous “live and let” ethos often gets overwhelmed by traditional disdain for transgender and gay people. Things were getting better for a while. In 2015, the City of Laramie, where 21-year old Matthew Shepard was tortured to death for being gay in 1998, passed the state’s first LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinance, and statewide protection began to look possible.

Then Trump happened.

A national LGBTQ backlash began in 2016, a wave that swells every day.

Wyoming is surfing that wave. Equality Wyoming is still pushing hard, but Movement Advancement Project says the state offers LGBTQ people virtually zero protection from discrimination.

That’s the background. Here’s what happened this month:

Fremont County’s school board eliminated protections for LGBTQ staff and students

You can read details here and here in local reporting from County 10 Community News. It boils down to this: Residents complained to school board members about a district policy that included sexual orientation and gender identity as “protected classes,” meaning the district specifically banned discriminating against or harassing teachers or kids because they’re gay, transgender, bisexual, or any other form of LGBTQ.

Early this month, members of the Fremont County School Board decided to remove all protected classes not specified in state law. They wrote a new policy that limited protection to “age, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability.”

That meant removing protections for “sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, marital status, and pregnancy.”

They held a community meeting. Residents showed up, many of them angry, demanding that LGBTQ protections be stripped from policy.

Things got ugly, fast. Anti-LGBTQ slurs flew around the meeting room.

District professionals objected to the policy change, saying they were simply following “best practices” that had never been controversial and had never caused problems.

Teachers and kids tried to speak up to say they NEEDED protection. Board members cut many of them off, enforcing an arbitrary two-minute time limit.

The board suppressed threats of mass murder, violence, and rape

The quote at the top of my story is part of a six-minute letter written by 10 students in the LGBTQ+ club at the high school. Board members refused to listen. Teacher Nate Shoutis tried to read it, but got cut off. Besides threats of mass murder, the students’ letter claims members of the group have been threatened with beatings and rape, and that one student was groped in the genitals to “prove that she was a girl.”

The board’s new policy addressed no need. Students, administrators, and teachers are furious, but they have few options.

Vice-Chairperson Scott Jensen, pressed to explain why the board was removing protections common in school district policy around the U.S., had no rational answers.

He said, “Sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, marital status, and pregnancy. I don’t think we need those extra divisions in the policy. I think we should strike those and just go with what is defined in statute.”

He didn’t say why, only that the protections, which don’t affect anyone not discriminating against or harassing people, “create division.” Students who attended the meeting, however, say the only division being created was by members of the public shouting slurs against LGBTQ people.

Motivations become more clear reading reports that at least one board member says LGBTQ identities are “lame.”

The board voted 4–3 to eliminate LGBTQ protections from district policy.

Students at the middle school and high school staged walkouts last week, but many are afraid

Many students who protested covered their faces when photographers showed up. Most withheld their names. Several students say they received death threats after returning from the walkouts. They say most cases of bullying go unreported anyway, and now they have even less access to remedies.

Administrators tried to allay their fears by citing Wyoming statute and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which prohibits discriminating in employment on the basis of LGBTQ identity.

The kids aren’t impressed.

The state law cited is the same law that already doesn’t protect LGBTQ people, and as far as the Supreme Court goes, they ask how teenagers are supposed to access federal court. They’ve never felt safe in school, but at least they used to have district policy on their side. The school board took that away at the end of a meeting that overflowed with community hatred of LGBTQ people, to the point that folks were OK with stripping protections for military veterans and pregnant women.

LGBTQ students and teachers in Lander are clear eyed. They see exactly what happened, and they’re already becoming less open, out of fear. They’re pushing forward, saying they hope for positive change at a scheduled June 7 board meeting.

You probably will never read about Lander, Wyoming again

It’s one small town in conservative America. Wyoming isn’t about to include LGBTQ people in state non-discrimination laws, and this school board is fine with using that as an excuse to push hatred and fear, to call protecting the bullied and harrassed “division.”

If you’re like me, though, and you search out local LGBTQ stories every day, you’ll see many more accounts just like this one.

Because this is how it happens.

This is how LGBTQ rights evaporate.

Welcome to the backlash.

Please, understand that it’s happening, and understand that at this point, ONLY tough federal laws can protect kids like those frightened teens in Lander. We need the Equality Act, we need Supreme Court reform, we need everything that only an overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses of Congress can deliver.

Get out there and vote Blue like your life depends on it. Kids in Lander (and everywhere) will thank you.

James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

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