Pride and Prejudices

The GSA Network, or Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network (formerly Gay-Straight Alliance Network), is a “youth-driven organization that connects LGBTQ+ youth and school-based GSA clubs through peer support, leadership development, and community organizing and advocacy.”

According to the GSA Network, Genders & Sexualities Alliance clubs, or GSAs, are “student-run organizations that unite LGBTQ+ and allied youth to build community and organize around issues impacting them in their schools and communities.” However, GSAs have “evolved beyond their traditional role” and “have emerged as vehicles for deep social change related to racial, gender, and educational justice.”

Starting as early as pre-school, GSA clubs serve as a place for students to “meet and connect with other trans and queer students on campus,” “create safe spaces and talk about various issues they face,” and engage in activism.

At the middle and elementary school level, these clubs can have different names, including but not limited to:

• “Queer Straight Alliance”
• “Rainbow Club”
• “Affinity Group”
• “Belonging Group
• “Unity Club”

In a self-published article titled “LGBTQ+ Youth of Color Need #PoliceFreeSchools,” the GSA network states that “LGBTQ+ youth of color can only access a quality education and safe school environments if we disband school police departments that disproportionately target and apprehend students of color” and that “removing all police presence in schools is a critical step to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.”

The article also states that the “National Trans Youth Council [Gender Justice Leadership Programs], a project of GSA Network and Transgender Law Center,” developed a “Nine Point Platform and manifesto on Trans Youth Liberation.” The Platform calls for the “abolition of the police, ICE, borders, and the judicial system,” an “end of the cisgender heterosexual patriarchy,” and an “end to global white supremacy.”

The GSA Network has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from nonprofits such as New Venture Fund, the Transgender Law Center, The Schott Foundation for Public Education, Tides Foundation, Novo Foundation, and Ford Foundation.

Los Angeles Unified School District’s Rainbow Clubs, part of its “OUT for Safe Schools Campaign,” states that the clubs are “inclusive spaces for elementary students to explore LGBTQ+ related topics.” The district clubs base activities on themes related to “current events, timely campaigns, and the interest of our participants.”

One activity in the guide, titled “LGBTQ+ Liberation,” focuses on activism. It states that “activists are people who work to change things they don’t think are fair about the world. They speak up when they see something that isn’t right and work with other people to come up with solutions to problems. This is called fighting for social justice.” The activity includes a book about two activists that “sometimes referred to themselves as drag queens” and links to an associated coloring page.

It was recently revealed that the district’s Rainbow Clubs are offered to students as young as four years old.

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the Waterloo Community School District High School’s “Diversity Club” faulty advisor’s opposition to a proposed Gender Identity policy “requiring parent involvement when creating a Gender Identity Plan.” The teacher states that “the issue with the proposal is the repeated use of the word ‘required’ with regard to students’ parents and their participation in all of these arrangements.”

The club advisor continues: “I wholeheartedly disagree that the ‘parental involvement’ in a student’s education, as referenced in 8:95, has anything to do with gender identity and bathroom facilities.” Additionally, the advisor states that the policy in question is “intended to give parents/guardians a voice regarding the actual education of their child(ren). It is NOT intended to give the school board the right to REQUIRE parent involvement in bathroom usage outside the classroom and educational environment.”

The staff member further clarifies that they are “aware of a number of students who do not have supportive parents with regards to their existence as transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming” and that the “problem is with the requirement of parent involvement.

The Diversity Club advisor states that the club is “registered with the National Genders and Sexualities Alliance” and is “also part of the Illinois GSA network of educators and am in communication with them regularly.”

A Freedom of Information Act request in 2022 revealed that French Middle School staff, including the school counselor, were coordinating with the school’s GSA club to facilitate a student walkout. Emails show staff working with GSA club members to coordinate a student protest over “recent laws being passed and debated.” The event was in coordination with a “nationwide school walkout on April 1st, 2022” to “basically just going against the Dont Say Gay Bill [sic], and certain states passing laws against transwomen playing sports.”

Montgomery County Public Schools’ Bayard Rustin Elementary School’s Rainbow Club page is found on the school counselor’s website. The site page includes images related to pronoun use, Pride, and slides for a presentation titled “An Introduction to Non-Binary Identity.”

Videos embedded on the site include “What Does A Princess Really Look Like?” read by drag queen Tara Byte, “Kapaemahu” read by transgender teacher Kumu Hina, and “#QueeringtheClassroom.”

A linked document titled “Glossary on LGBTQIA++ relevant terminology” includes eighty-four terms such as “Bicurious,” “BDSM,” “Bear Community,” “Bigender,” “Kink,” “Leather community,” “Polyamory,” and “Womxn.”

A January 18, 2023, post shows that Witchcraft Elementary School in Salem Public School District informed parents that the school would be starting a Rainbow Club for third grade through fifth grade students to “discuss and implement strategies to create a more inclusive community,” “share resources related to gender and inclusive communities,” and “create artwork to reflect and show pride in our identities.” The post concludes by stating that “if you would NOT like your child to be able to participate in this club, please contact…“

Saint Paul Public Schools’ Safe School Manual states that GSAs can “function as activist groups, working to fight prejudice in the schools through educating the broader community about LGBTQ issues.” The document lists ideas for meetings including “working to institute change in their schools or community” such as “planning political action strategies.”

The manual also provides a section titled “20 Ways Your GSA Can Rock the World.” Actions or activities include creating a “diverse school library,” “creating safe spaces” which includes having teachers display “‘Safe Space’ stickers,” a “day of silence” to “protest the silence created by heterosexism and anti-LGBTQ bias in our society,” “document school heterosexism or gender bias” around school, engaging in Pride marches, and “queering the curriculum.”

Also included in the manual is a document that asks club members to “assess the racism and transphobia in your GSA.” It states that “GSAs, like all institutions in the United States, reflect racist and sexist or transphobic elements of the country’s past and present” and that “transforming into an anti-racist and pro-transgender organization requires passing through these four stages of organizational development.”

Additionally, the manual provides how to build an “Anti-racist GSA” stating that the “LGBTQ youth movement cannot survive unless it includes POC and addresses issues of sexism, transphobia, racism, classism, ageism and environmental justice.” Suggestions include researching and educating “members about issues of race and class and how they relate to your school” and taking on “activist projects that intersect different kinds of oppression and liberation.”

Read a previous report on Saint Paul Public Schools’ Safe School Manual here.