Community Conversation - It’s a Scary Time for LBGTQ Kids – and Their Parents Too
The following is part of DougCo Collective’s “Community Conversations” and was written by a Douglas County community member (parent, student, teacher/staff or community member). The intent of “Community Conversations” is to give members of the Douglas County community an opportunity to contribute to the larger DCSD conversation with their lived experiences and perspectives.
Estimated Read Time: 9 minutes
I recently started up work travel again, after two years of no travel at all. My job is primarily remote – COVID notwithstanding – and working from home is every bit as glorious as I ever dreamed it would be. But in the Before Times, I was traveling about 20% of the time, which for me was the perfect balance, so I’d missed it. Last week I was at a client site with some other co-workers.
Over dinner one night, I had a very good conversation about politics with one of my colleagues, who leans to the right. I, of course, am pretty liberal. It was a good discussion, and didn’t devolve into insults or name calling. It was refreshing, and something that’s been in pretty short supply since the 2016 election.
I was telling him about the current state of things here in Douglas County, and about the very loud, very extreme voices that dominate the conversation, and are also socially and financially well-connected to the Kids First majority. I cited Joe Oltmann as an example, who in March on his daily podcast accused educators of “grooming” children to be gay so that they can abuse and molest them. As the parent of an LBGTQ teen, I feel that comments like those are disgusting and dangerous, and make the school district and the general environment more unsafe for her and kids like her. This is different than, say, Tucker Carlson spewing his invective out into the ether. This is someone in my community. I could encounter him at a grocery store, a bar or restaurant, or one of my kid’s sporting events. I could get into my car and drive 10 minutes and shop at his store in Castle Rock. My colleague didn’t seem to totally grasp why I find it as upsetting as I do. And it’s not because he’s insensitive or unintelligent; it’s because he’s not the parent of an LGBTQ kid, and because his kids are in their 20s and out on their own. He doesn’t have the context that I do.
When I told him about these attacks on educators, he said that those comments were not aimed at LBGTQ kids, but at the educators, so I shouldn’t be so upset. He said that the world is much more accepting of LGBTQ people than it once was, which got me thinking. Is it more accepting than it was 50 years ago? Absolutely. 20 years ago? Yes. 10 years, or five years ago? I’d say yes. But is the world more accepting of LBGTQ people than it was two years ago, or even a year ago? I’d say that’s debatable.
It wasn’t exactly a smooth, effortless journey for my kid after she came out. There were some bumps and detours along the way. There have been many hours of conversations with my husband and me, reassuring her that we’ll always love her no matter what, supporting her, and trying to guide her down the path of self-acceptance. It was a lot of hard work. We finally got there, with an assist from the awesome school counselor, who was great about keeping the lines of communication open. I’m really proud of her. She’s ending the school year in a much better place, feeling stronger, happier, more empowered and more confident.
The last thing she needs is a delusional person with a head full of the pernicious and homophobic rantings of right-wing extremists making assumptions about her; namely, that she’s gay because she’s been “groomed” to be so, not because that’s just who she is. She doesn’t need the judgment, disapproval, and criticism from people who believe that she’s been malevolently manipulated into being who she is, instead of understanding – and respecting – that she accepts and loves herself just the way she is.
Those sorts of preconceived notions would overshadow all the dealings someone might have with my child, if they were someone who believed any of that malignant narrative. It would certainly affect the way they treated her, their opinions of her, and their interactions with her. Perhaps they would take it upon themselves to try and “counsel” her, or ask her which one of her teachers “made” her gay, or maybe even decide to let Child Protective Services know that there was a child being “abused” who needed help. Who knows? Ignorant, misinformed people imbued with a sense of righteousness are dangerous and unpredictable.
The day after this discussion with my coworker, this article appeared in my news feed, from a local Fox station in Wellington, CO, that both enraged and saddened me. It’s about a mother who, upon learning that her child attended an LBGTQ club meeting at school, went on the warpath, upbraiding the faculty sponsor, the school, and the school district, for allowing the club to exist. At some point, the parental rights group Parents Defending Education (PDE) got involved. This is a very conservative, hyper-partisan organization that employs the same tactics of attacking and vilifying educators and school boards that we’ve seen used incessantly by the Kids First majority school board directors – and their supporters – and the Douglas County chapter of FAIR (formerly Wokebusters of Douglas County). Either PDE or the parent then got the media involved.
Based on her response, it’s pretty clear that this parent has chosen to believe the rantings of Joe Oltmann and his ilk: that there’s some sort of evil plot afoot by liberals and educators to “turn” her child gay, and the idea that her child might just be trying to figure out who she is and how she fits into the world is not a possibility at all.
“Erin Lee, whose daughter attended Wellington Middle School in Wellington, said during an interview with conservative media that her daughter was invited to the club by her art teacher last May, and that students in the club were told by an outside speaker that ‘what you hear in here, stays in here.’”
First of all – an interview with “conservative media?” I can only imagine what that must have been like.
And secondly, when did asking people to respect everyone’s privacy become a cause for alarm? Because that’s all that was meant by saying, “what you hear in here, stays in here.” How is that different from knowing who that friend (or friends) is who you can share something with in confidence and know that it won’t ever go any further?
My daughter’s school has a club similar to this one, and she attended a few meetings earlier in the school year. It turned out that it wasn’t for her, which was fine, but that group has the same rule. The things talked about were not to go any further than the people in that room. Did I freak out about that rule? No, I didn’t. My daughter and I have a pretty close relationship, and I’ve always tried to be open and honest with her. But there are always going to be things that she won’t feel comfortable talking about with her parents. That’s completely normal, and more importantly, that’s true of all kids, whether they’re straight, gay, or otherwise. It would be weirder if your kid wanted to talk to you about those things.
“‘She explained to my daughter that if she is not 100% comfortable in her female body, then she’s transgender,’ Lee said. ‘She then told the kids that parents aren’t safe, and that it’s OK to lie to them about where they are in order to attend this meeting.’”
When I see stories like this, I always notice that the parent is relating what they heard from their child, and there’s never anything indicating that they reached out to the teacher to clarify things or pose some additional questions. Any parent knows that kids often don’t tell you the whole story. And that’s not because they’re bad, or trying to be deceitful, it’s because they’re kids. How many times have you asked your kid about something – even something as innocuous as how their day at school was – and gotten a convoluted, rambling answer that was clearly missing a few key points? It’s happened to me plenty of times. A few well-placed follow-up questions later, I have a more complete picture that makes much more sense than the story I got to begin with. Did this parent make her attacks and get the media involved having only one side of the story? My guess is that yes, she did. It’s ridiculous and asinine. Any teacher I’ve ever reached out to has always responded promptly, and always been happy to answer any questions I might have. Why couldn’t this parent do the same thing?
’”She doubled down that parents aren’t safe [and] that heterosexuality and monogamy are not normal,’ the mother alleged.’”
I can say with confidence that this is, unequivocally, a gross mischaracterization of what was discussed during the club meeting. This is so ludicrous and far-fetched that it’s difficult for me to believe that someone could take such notions seriously and really believe that something like this was actually going on in a club meeting at school. Because this parent was so convinced – perhaps even eager to believe – that something nefarious was going on, she jumped to conclusions and filled in the blanks with extremist invective scurrilous accusations. It reminds me of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s. Or a skit you might see on Saturday Night Live.
The child in question is no longer enrolled in the school district, and now attends a private Christian school where she is “doing much better,” according to her mother. Perhaps she’s thriving there, and if so, that’s great. But if not, I shudder to think about what “doing much better” might mean.