Students at Bartram Trail High School stomp on a Pride flag (left) and wave a makeshift Confederate flag — Images: Twitter
A Florida school district is promising action after high school students waved Confederate flags and yelled anti-gay slurs at members of a Gay-Straight Alliance club.
Students at Bartram Trail High School in St. Johns County held the anti-LGBTQ rally after school on Friday, Sept. 17, Action News Jax reports.
Video of the incident shows multiple students standing near members of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and yelling anti-LGBTQ slurs at them, including, “There’s only two genders, faggot.”
One mother, who didn’t want to be identified in order to protect her family, said that her daughter had a Pride flag ripped out of her hand.
That flag was later stomped on by members of the rally, who were also waving homemade Confederate flags.
“It was terrifying, it was absolutely terrifying,” the mother said.
Her daughter was “approached by one of the boys, who started yelling at her saying, ‘You’re gay. You have no rights,’ and kind of spitting at her. She walked past it and got on her bus.”
The mother is now urging for the students involved in the rally to be expelled. She has also sent videos of the incident to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
“Enough is enough,” she said. It is time for that school board to take action at that school, and it needs some serious new leadership.”
She added: “I think if you show that level of hate or attacked at people just for people being who they are, there’s no tolerance for that.”
Another mother told News4Jax that the video she watched was “shocking” and “scary.”
“It made me wonder what could possibly happen at this school to put students in danger,” she said. “And it was kind of akin to videos you would see in the early 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement.”
The mother added that she was “very scared to see that kind of hate. To me this could be described as a hate crime happening on the campus where my child is at school.”
The school district confirmed that it is “actively addressing” the incident, with a spokesperson telling Action News Jax that the students involved “will receive consequences that align with our student code of conduct.”
“This behavior is not acceptable and is not indicative of the culture and students at BTHS,” they added. “It is very disappointing that these students handled themselves in this way.”
St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office said that it had received videos from parents and would work with the district if necessary.
A fundamentalist church in Indianapolis is defending a June 29 sermon in which a lay preacher urged congregants to pray for LGBTQ people to die and suggested they kill themselves.
The remarks, delivered by Stephen Falco during a “Men’s Preaching Night” at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, included multiple homophobic slurs, biblical references, and rants against Pride Month, LGBTQ rights, and what he called “disgusting” and “evil” behavior, according to TheIndianapolis Star.
"Why do I hate sodomites, why do I hate f****ts? Because they attack children," Falco ranted in the sermon, video of which was posted to Sure Foundation Baptist Church's YouTube channel. "They're coming after your children, they are attacking them in schools today, and not only schools, in public places, and they're proud about it!
Trespassing charges have been dismissed against Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old transgender woman from Illinois who is believed to be the first person arrested under Florida’s ban on transgender bathroom use in public buildings.
On June 20, Leon County Judge Lashawn Riggans granted a motion from Rheintgen’s attorney to dismiss the case after the state failed to file charging documents and other required paperwork within 90 days of her arrest -- violating her Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
Riggans ruled that because the state failed to act, the charges had to be dismissed “because the speedy trial period has expired” -- a reference to Rheintgen’s Sixth Amendment right, which protects defendants from undue delays in the legal process.
Gina Ortiz Jones was elected mayor of San Antonio in a runoff election on June 7.
The victory was historic, as Jones is not only San Antonio's first out LGBTQ mayor but the first Asian-American female mayor of a major city in Texas and the first female mayor in Texas to have served in a war.
(She's a former Air Force officer and Iraq War veteran who previously served as Under Secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration.)
Jones is also the first mayor since 2005 to not have previously served on the city council and will serve a four-year term.
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