Benson Kua
Audio By Carbonatix
At school, students can find out who they want to be.
For many, school is the first taste of freedom and a space for discovery. At school, students might find a teacher they can talk to about their first same-sex crush. Maybe their school has a Gay and Sexualities Alliance Club, and after the final bell, they’ll linger with all their closest friends to talk about queer adolescence. These scenarios, perhaps not terribly common, were at least possible in the past. But now, none of that is possible. A new state law could very well turn public schools into another unsafe place for many LGBTQ community members, and teachers will have to walk a new line.
The new law, which went into effect on the first of the month, places sweeping bans on all DEI programming, including, but not limited to, extracurriculars that discuss race, gender and sexual orientation. The law also prevents teachers from assisting in what the state has classified as “social transitioning,” meaning teachers can not allow students to use pronouns or names that differ from what the student was assigned at birth.
The GSA Network filed a lawsuit in August challenging the bill, which contains more stipulations and intricacies than can fit in a 1,000-word summary. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Transgender Law Center and several other LGBTQ advocacy organizations joined the suit against Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath and three school districts, including Plano Independent School District. The lawsuit alleges that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
“Because [the Social Transition Ban] section is unconstitutionally vague, what is actually prohibited is ambiguous, but the law does not explicitly say that school employees may not refer to students by their chosen name or pronouns,” reads a letter the ACLU of Texas sent to all Texas school districts, discouraging compliance with the new law. “Referring to someone in the way that they want to be addressed is a matter of basic human decency and respect—and arguably not a form of “assist[ance].”
The letter also claims that the law violates students’ rights to privacy.
“If school administrators use students’ deadnames or misgender them in front of other students or parents, this can also severely violate federal privacy laws by ‘outing’ the student as transgender and causing or exacerbating bullying and harassment,” reads the letter. “Students have the right to share or withhold information about their gender identity under federal law.”
Last week, the Texas American Federation of Teachers (Texas AFT) joined the lawsuit, highlighting the bill’s impacts on student safety and teachers who belong to the community they are now banned from supporting.
“When educators step in the classroom, we make a promise to support our students and their families,” said Texas AFT President Zeph Capo in a press release. “SB 12 asks us to set aside both that promise and the state’s own educator code of ethics to be foot soldiers for Texas’s anti-inclusion crusade.”
New Law Is A Threat To Teachers
Texas Republicans have progressively villainized educators and politicized inclusive education efforts, even at higher education institutions. The most glaring example is the recent resignation of celebrated Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh, who voluntarily stepped down after a viral video of a gender identity lesson launched a social media campaign against the university.
The state, through many attempts and controversial legislative moves, has made teaching a less attractive career path, said Johnathan Gooch, a spokesperson for Equality Texas. The waning of DEI policies in Texas has already spurred an exodus from the state at the higher education level, and Gooch says it’s likely to trickle down to the lower levels.
“Teachers are truly the backbone of our society,” said Gooch. “They are so selfless, and they commit themselves, their time, their funds oftentimes, to the education of young people in the state of Texas. We do very little to support them. Now that we’re micromanaging the way they’re handling their classrooms, why would they want to stay?”
Gooch empathizes with teachers who believe in the power of school and work hard to cultivate a safe space for students, especially the most vulnerable.
“We have tied the hands of teachers who want to help young people succeed,” he said. “The state has told them, ‘You can’t help trans people succeed, you can’t help young queer people succeed.’ Because the type of support that young queer and trans kids need is off the table under SB 12.”
But GSA clubs and visibility aren’t only good for students; they’re also good for the teachers who are equally targeted by the tirade on the LGBTQ community. In erasing the identities of students, the state has also erased the identity of countless teachers and required them to be equally complicit in the action.
“Now the burden is being placed on teachers to enforce the moral code of the parents in the classroom,” he said. “That will not only harm young people as they move into the world, but it creates a very toxic climate for teachers who don’t feel like they can even be themselves in their own workplace.”
Within the section that bans clubs, education on gender and sexual identities outside what is explicitly listed in the state-set curriculum is also outlawed. Gooch says this narrows the scope of what students are exposed to beyond what is necessary, and to the detriment of students who will one day be thrust into a world they are not prepared for.
“Texas is one of the most diverse states in the Union. In order to adequately prepare young people to enter the workforce, they need to understand what they’re walking into,” he said. “That means introducing them to cultures and identities and lifestyles that are different than their own, different than what they see at home. That’s just good education.”
Students Suffer The Most
The GOP is on a seemingly never-ending venture to sanitize schools of material it deems obscene and harmful. Whether it be ridding state curriculum of critical race theory lessons, banning historically relevant literature or now banning inclusive clubs, children are going to school in bubbles, to their own detriment.
But the real consequence of this isn’t on the students who will be ill-adapted to different identities; it’s on the students who, whether the state likes it or not, are LGBTQ.
“The ethos coming out of the majority, the legislature is, they would just assume all of us be quiet, shut up, and not be seen,” Capo said to the Observer. “This is completely about erasure. Erasure of anybody that they don’t feel comfortable with for whatever reason they don’t feel comfortable. The fact of the matter is, everyone has a right to exist.”
Capo and Gooch highlighted the same risk: the LGBTQ community has a disproportionately high rate of homelessness, usually after they come out of the closet and are shunned by an unaccepting family.
“For decades, we’ve served LGBTQ students in schools that serve homeless shelters because they’ve been kicked out of their homes,” said Capo. “They’ve been made homeless.”
LGBTQ youth also have higher rates of suicidal ideation, and Gooch says isolation without the safety that students could have found at school will only worsen it.
“We know that this type of anti-LBGTQ legislation increases mental health stressors for LGBTQ young people,” he said. “The rates of suicidal ideation among trans and queer people are off the charts. Suicidal ideation for young people and for children should be zero. And we, as a state, have a duty to drive that number down.”
The risks of the new law are unignorable and undeniable, but Capo says the state is doing just that, and hopes the law doesn’t last long.
“The legislature can’t say that they were not aware of the consequences and the potential unintended consequences of their bill,” he said. “If this bill stands, the consequences will be grave for a large number of students who are simply trying to survive.”
