Republican Attacks on LGBTQ+ Teachers and Students May Reverse 40 Years of Progress

I used to teach, and I’m also publicly gay. I worked in California public schools during the 1980s and 1990s previously I ever set foot in a congressional building, and I can assure you that this situation has happened before. We will go backward 40 years if Republicans get their way with our youngsters and public schools.

When I started a profession in the 1980s, the Briggs Initiative, an aspect of state legislation that might have prohibited all openly homosexual and lesbian professors from working in California public schools, had just been defeated in California.

When that proposal was being discussed, I was a senior school student. I remember listening to state lawmakers argue that a prohibition on such activities was required to “protect our kids.” They stated that the slightest mention of LGBTQI+ issues and several teachers who identify as LGBTQI+ were attempting to “recruit” kids into the “homosexual lifestyle.”