#Gay Straight alliance

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Tuesday, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced that her pick for Vice President is Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. In recent years, as trans and queer people have come under attack from over a thousand proposed bills, Walz is expected to serve as a source of optimism for LGBTQ+ people. The governor’s long track record on LGBTQ+ rights positions him as a strong oppositional force against what has become a national attack on LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender individuals.

“I am proud to announce that I've asked Tim Walz to be my running mate. As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he's delivered for working families like his. It's great to have him on the team. Now let’s get to work. Join us,” read Harris’ statement on Twitter. Walz has taken decisive action against attacks on transgender people in surrounding states, making Minnesota a refuge for those seeking care. In 2023, he signed an executive order protecting transgender people from out-of-state prosecution if they seek care within Minnesota’s borders. The executive order also issued a bulletin to health insurance companies, mandating coverage and initiating investigations into health insurance denials in the state.

In 2024, Walz signed a bill banning the gay and transgender panic defense. This defense is often used to help individuals avoid murder charges or receive lighter sentences by asserting that they were "deceived" by a romantic partner who was gay or transgender. According to one study, the transgender panic defense has been used at least 351 times. Walz's pro-LGBTQ+ record goes back much further than his time as governor. In 1999, he sponsored the first gay-straight alliance at his high school while working as a teacher. In Congress, he co-sponsored the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and voted to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D)’s track record on LGBTQ+ issues has been stellar, dating back to his pre-Congress days.

This makes me glad that he is the nominee.

[mermazeablaze]

Misti Tope is the current head principal of Classen School of Advanced Studies at North East High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Misti Tope has been fostering an environment of fear & hostility among everyone including students, faculty, educators & parents. It is to the point where parents are organizing private meetups to discuss her. Students are creating petitions.

Misti Tope has recently stated multiple times to students & faculty that she wants to create an educational environment that aligns with Ryan Walters views.

Misti Tope has been firing teachers of color & working to force them out. Misti Tope recently fired a trans teacher, Mx Mustain, who was close to receiving tenure. Misti Tope, of course, lied about the reason behind these firings.

Misti Tope has threatened female students who wanted to report predatory behavior from faculty. She went so far as to make threatening phone calls & disbanded an after school club over these students compiling information. Misti Tope has threatened to disband any club that seeks to protect themselves from predatory teachers.

Misti Tope physically gropes students over dress code violations. Whether they are violating dress code or not, this is unexcusable. Misti Tope also makes derogatory commentary on female students being "busty" & "curvy".

Misti Tope actively intimidates the female student body. There have been situations where male students have shown their penises to female students & all the male students receive is detention. Misti Tope has called female students "overemotional" & "dramatic".

Misti Tope keeps seeking ways to disband the Black Student Union. Misti Tope has vocally compared black students in BSU more than once to rats & roaches pulling at each other's weaves. Misti Tope also stated that black students are equivalent to goldfish & don't deserve an education because they are incapable of retaining information.

Misti Tope is an active Holocaust denier. The son of a Holocaust survivor was kicked off stage while giving a presentation. Misti Tope shuts conversations surrounding the Holocaust.

Misti Tope's son who is a student is known to carve & graffiti swastikas & other Nazi imagery all over the school. Misti Tope's son also states antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic & racist rhetoric. Misti Tope scapegoats by saying he learns this from anime, which is untrue. Misti Tope also allows her son to skip classes & wander around the school.

Misti Tope attempts to force transgender students to use restrooms of their biological gender. Misti Tope has told transgender students to dress according to their biological gender.

Misti Tope is seeking to end funding to the athletic departments & divert funds to a swim team.

Misti Tope is not the future of Classen. Misti Tope is unfit to be a part of any school district in any capacity.

Again, I am not the only parent. Other parents are organizing & mobilizing of their own accord & having meetups. The same is being said of students. I have added screenshots because the admins of the Classen Parent group like deleting posts as evidence when things become heated.

Students, though this action was not right, cornered Misti Tope in her office this Friday (05/03/24). This is how threatened they feel by Misti Tope, this is the environment she's creating.

[punkspassion]

Feeling a bit of queer joy today! I’ve been really struggling for a long time because of a lack of community (for context I live in a super tiny town and im the only openly queer person in my school)

But! Me and my friend are gonna try to start a GSA at my school!!!! It’s giving me hope. Reminding me that we’re here, and we’re not going anywhere no matter what. Being around other LGBTQIA+ people really makes me understand Chappel Roan’s song “Pink Pony Club” on another level. It feels like the embodiment of joy and acceptance and finding community for the first time and how life changing that can be.

Im here, Queer and not going anywhere

[gsmst-blahaj-brigade]

first meeting summary

sorry I forgot to post! Oopsie doopsie I guess lmao

Anyways, first we started by having everyone fill out the Google doc to collect emergency contacts. After, we started by introducing the club itself, what we are about, what we do, and our schedule.

After all that was out of the way, we introduced the club sponsors, and thr club captains. Each person shared their name, pronouns, and something fun.

When Introductions were finished, we moved on to an icebreaker game of would you rather, having everyone move to the left, right, or center of the room depending on their answer. After they moved, we had them discuss something about their answer.

Overall, it was a fun meeting, and the next will be on September 27th, where we will having a game night with karaoke!

[titansandcurses]

extended interaction with some baby gays is so hard bc on one hand they can be so terminally online in the worst way possible and it becomes so annoying but on the other hand. i was once you. i am looking into a mirror at a reflection from several years ago and also right now. i hate you i love you i wish i could protect you from how hard it is. i remember being you so vividly but i find you so insufferable. i want to help you but i can't help but wonder if i'm harming you and if i am i don't know how to stop.

[snufkingg]

heres a lil smth i made to advertise my schools gay straight alliance bc we all agreed it would attract the right crowd

crazy silly

[thejdoll]

I have a new respect for Disney. They are a mixed bag, but they get a lot right. I can relate to that.

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[claypotz]

tonight I’m representing my school’s gsa in a southern us city and the amount of people that have told me “thank you for existing” has made me nearly start sobbing

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michelangelo Signorile at The Signorile Report:

When Jacob Reitan was a student at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minnesota, where Tim Walz taught social studies in the 1990s—long before a political career that would eventually take him to the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion, and now as the VP running mate on a presidential ticket—Reitan was a student in Gwen Walz’s class.

Reitan was closeted in a time when being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender was deeply shunned by many Americans, particularly in rural and small-town America. Bullying in schools was rampant from big cities to the most remote parts of the country, and it was often dangerous to be openly queer as hate crimes escalated. “Gwen was my English literature teacher in 10th grade,” Reitan told me in an interview on my SiriusXM Progress program. “And in 10th grade, I knew that I was gay, but I was living in the closet of one. It was an echo chamber. I was out to no one, but I was wrestling with this reality. That was difficult because not only did I not tell anyone that I was gay, I also knew no one who was gay.” Reitan, who would go on to become a gay activist in later years and an attorney, remembers feeling very lonely in the small city of Mankato, the county seat of Blue Earth County, 82 miles south of Minneapolis. On the first day of class with Gwen Walz, she said something at the beginning that stirred Reitan.

“She started the class by saying that this was a safe place for gay and lesbian students,” Reitan vividly recalls. “I had never heard any teacher say anything positive about gay kids from the front of the class. My heart was beating out of my chest. I thought, Does she know that I'm gay? Is that why she's saying this? And it stuck with me.” Reitan soon decided to come out as gay, telling his sister and a good friend first. The third person he came out to was Gwen Walz. “Gwen and I had long conversations about being gay, and she talked about being supportive of a previous student of hers who was openly gay when [she and Tim] were teaching in Nebraska and things that they had done to support that student,” he recounted. “And so I knew that Tim and Gwen were supportive people that I could go to.” Within the year, Reitan, the first student at Mankato West to come out as gay, worked with other students and created the gay-straight alliance at Mankato West. As Vice President Harris noted in her introduction of her running mate in Philadelphia two weeks ago, Tim Walz, the social studies teacher and football coach, became the faculty adviser to the group.

Both Tim and Gwen Walz became lifelong friends of Reitan and his family. Reitan told me about how their faith is what guided them in supporting LGBTQ people. “Tim's core is the concept of treating people with compassion, equality, and justice,” Reitan said. “And it's in Gwen's core too. Gwen, in high school, would talk to me about why it was important to her because of her faith.” “We talked about how I come from a Lutheran family. My grandfather was a Lutheran minister, and she would say that it's because of her Lutheran faith that she does this. They're very religious people. Gwen prays every day. Their concept of religion includes treating people equally and justly.” That is enormously powerful to hear at a time when Donald Trump courts Christian nationalists in the evangelical base who demonize LGBTQ people. He’s promised them, as he did in his first term, to strip the rights of LGBTQ people. much of which is outlined in Project 2025.

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, calls LGBTQ people “groomers"—a grotesque and dangerous lie that implies we are pedophiles—and is opposed to marriage equality and gender-affirming care for transgender people. So the fact that the Walzes supported marriage equality in 2006 as Tim Walz was embarking upon a run for a congressional seat in a rural, red Minnesota district is pretty astounding. That was a time when President George W. Bush was pushing for a federal marriage amendment, and many states had banned same-sex marriage. Even most Democratic elected officials, including those from urban areas, publicly opposed same-sex marriage. In fact, they saw the middle ground—the safe space—in opposing the federal marriage amendment while opposing marriage equality. It was pretty cowardly. But not Tim Walz. Reitan relayed a story from 2006, when Tim and Gwen Walz were mulling over Tim’s possible run for the U.S. House, and they came to his home for dinner.

Jacob Reitan came out as gay in Gwen Walz’s English Lit class in 1999 at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minnesota. Reitan helped form a gay-straight alliance that year with Gwen and her husband Tim, who taught social studies.

In 2006, when Tim was gearing up for a Congressional run, he supported marriage equality in a time where many elected Democrats still didn’t support marriage equality or LGBTQ+ rights.

In 2004, his ticketmate Kamala Harris fought for marriage equality in California and refused to defend Prop 8 as Attorney General.

See Also:

Public Notice: Tim Walz's remarkably courageous stand for LGBT youth

[yoursapphicsgirlfriend]

[nerdykeith]

The GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) in Iowa are taking a stand against the anti-LGBTQ. They say they are not going to listen to the rules. Good on them. These outrageous rules are only hurting the trans youth and putting them in vulnerable situations. They need to have some sense of safety. I wish them well with this. 

[adetheenby]

thse kids from GSA came and had a talk in my class abt how we should stop by and check em out and maybe join, honestly felt proud of myself bc for years these two kids looked like they were queer in some way to me and i was RIGHT but also oneof them definitely clocked me bc my dude WHY did you keep glancing at me STOP GLANCING AT ME WHY ARE YOU ONLY GLANCING AT ME MULTIPLE TIMES?????????????????????? like STOP i was sitting firstrow too, how am i supposed to NOT laugh at how you just nonverbally called me an obvious homo??????????

[longtimesatyr04]

Wholesome internet interactions(ft. Me and some good cishet man on YouTube)

[localdiscountgoth]

sometimes i remember that time my catholic schools gay straight alliance (we called it love club to get around the arch diocese rules) made posters and my friends and i put anime ships on the posters because we were 15 and a some girl vandalized the posters (she was a lesbian) and posted it on her tumblr?????

i do wonder what came of that

[quirkedupkicks]

my man kiri really thought he was shootin his shot there... don't worry bro, bakugou doesn't even know he has a secret to keep yet..

[veveisveryuncool]

non-binary/gender ambiguous warriors assemble