University dismisses 2nd professor in kerfuffle over anti-trans student’s essay

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

The University of Oklahoma (OU) recently dismissed a professor for telling students that they wouldn’t be counted absent from her class if they attended an on-campus protest in support of a transgender teaching assistant (TA) who was placed on administrative leave after she failed a student’s essay that referred to trans people as “demonic.” The newly dismissed professor reportedly didn’t give the same option to students who wanted to protest against the trans TA’s reinstatement, OU said.

OU composition professor Kelli Alvarez was accused of viewpoint discrimination for her alleged actions, OU said in an official statement cited by KFOR. OU’s director of first-year composition emailed Alvarez’s students, calling Alvarez’s actions “inappropriate and wrong,” adding, “The university classroom exists to teach students how to think, not what to think.”

The director informed students that they could miss the Friday class to attend either the protest or the counterprotest. The director also noted that Alvarez has been replaced for the remainder of the term, which ends on December 19. OU said it agrees with the director’s actions.

“Classroom instructors have a special obligation to ensure that the classroom is never used to grant preferential treatment based on personal political beliefs, nor to pressure students to adopt particular political or ideological views,” OU wrote in its statement.

At the Friday protest, hundreds of students rallied in support of Mel Curth, a trans TA who OU placed on administrative leave after she gave a student a grade of zero on an essay about a study on gender roles in which the student called trans people “demonic.” The student, Samantha Fulnecky, filed a religious discrimination complaint with OU in November, and the university put Curth on administrative leave.

Students at the protest chanted, “OU shame on you,” “Protect our professors,” and “Justice for Mel,” KOKH-TV reported. Even students who didn’t agree with Curth’s failing grade for the student agreed that Fulnecky’s essay was poorly written and that Curth didn’t need to be put on leave.

At one point in the protest, a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) supporter got in front of the crowd and began counterprotesting.

The OU Chapter of the right-wing young conservatives group published a transphobic tweet saying, “We should not be letting mentally ill professors around students. Clearly this professor lacks the intellectual maturity to set her own bias aside and take grading seriously. Professors like this are the very reason conservatives can’t voice their beliefs in the classroom.”

In her paper, Fulnecky wrote that people aren’t “pressured to be more masculine or feminine,” that she doesn’t see it as a problem when peers use teasing to enforce gender norms, and that “eliminating gender in our society… pulls us farther from God’s original plan.” She also said trans identities are “demonic and severely [harm] American youth.”

In her response, Curth — to whom the OU Department of Psychology recently gave its Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award — wrote that her grade wasn’t because Fulnecky had “certain beliefs,” but rather because the paper “does not answer the questions for this assigment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”

In a statement, OU wrote that it takes First Amendment rights and religious freedoms seriously and began a “full review” of the situation to “swiftly” address the matter, including a “formal grade appeals process” and a review of the student’s claim of “illegal discrimination based on religious beliefs.”

The university also said that Curth had been placed on administrative leave during the finalization of the discrimination review, leaving “a full-time professor” to serve as the course’s instructor for the rest of the semester.

Oklahoma GOP legislators ask Supreme Court to overturn same-sex marriage

*This is reported by LGBTQ Nation.

Christian nationalist Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers (R) and state Rep. Jim Olsen (R) have filed a resolution asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Republican lawmakers in at least five other states have introduced similar resolutions, all of which are largely symbolic and non-binding.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 8 claims that the 2015 high court ruling conflicts with the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution, the country’s founding principles, and “the deeply rooted history and tradition” regarding state regulation of marriage rights. It also notes that 75% of Oklahoma voters supported banning any recognition of same-sex unions in a 2004 ballot measure.

The resolution refers to the Supreme Court decision as an “unwarranted governmental intrusion,” accuses the high court of abusing “the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to fabricate substantive rights,” and says the 2015 decision is “undermining the civil liberties” of states “without any valid constitutional warrant for doing so.”

“For millennia marriage has been understood, both in biblical teaching and in the Anglo-American common-law tradition, as the lifelong covenant union of one man and one woman,” the resolution states. “Obergefell arbitrarily and unjustly rejected and prohibited states from recognizing this definition of marriage in favor of its own definition of marriage and a novel, flawed interpretation” of the U.S. Constitution.

It also notes that both Democratic Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan had previously officiated same-sex weddings before the ruling and “should have recused themselves” from the Obergefell case. It further states that the decision has resulted in litigation directly targeting Christian business owners who refuse to accommodate same-sex couples and has resulted in Christians being vilified as “bigoted.”

Obergefell played a role in erasing biological distinctions in other arenas, threatening women’s privacy, safety, and athletic opportunities,” the resolution adds, drawing a dubious connection between same-sex marriage and transgender people’s civil rights.

If the resolution is approved by state lawmakers, copies of it will be distributed to the Supreme Court, the president of the U.S. Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, members of the Oklahoma congressional delegation and the Oklahoma attorney general, the resolution states.

Similar resolutions have been introduced in at least five other states: Michigan, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Deevers & Olsen’s resolution relies on legal misinterpretations

The court’s 2015 decision relied partially on the 1967 high court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which granted marriage rights to heterosexual couples consisting of individuals from different racial ethnicities.

“If rights were defined by who exercised them in the past, then received practices could serve as their own continued justification and new groups could not invoke rights once denied,” the Supreme Court wrote in its 2015 decision.

The court’s majority opinion also ruled that governmental refusal to recognize same-sex marriages denies them numerous benefits of marriage, including the ability to care for children and family members. State bans on same-sex marriages also restricted same-sex couples’ and their families’ ability to move freely around the country, since their rights could vary greatly if they moved to an anti-marriage state, the court ruling said.

As such, the court ruled that same-sex marriage bans violate both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause by needlessly introducing instability into same-sex relationships for no justifiable or compelling government interest.

While some Christian businesses have been sued for refusing to serve LGBTQ+ people and same-sex couples based on “sincerely held religious beliefs,” these lawsuits have focused on how such refusals violate public accommodations protections in state anti-discrimination laws, which require businesses to treat citizens equally, regardless of sexual orientation.

Deevers has long opposed same-sex marriages

Speaking last month to Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC) — which has been certified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Research Center — Deevers said, “The fact is, Obergefell is fundamentally antithetical to all of these, and there is just no right to gay marriage in the Constitution.”

Despite this claim, the Supreme Court believes that the Constitution’s equal protection and due process provisions require the government to treat all individuals equally under the law unless there’s a compelling government interest to do otherwise.

“Ultimately, marriage is not the state’s institution, it’s God’s institution,” Deevers said. “No Supreme Court ruling that redefines a God-ordained institution is ever truly settled: not morally or culturally, and even constitutionally. The rogue court will stand in judgment before God for their decision.”

Deevers’s campaign website also clearly states his anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs.

“It is outrageous that drag queens are permitted to dance and twerk for children at pride parades and story hours in our state,” his website states. “It is outrageous that … public schools have exposed elementary and middle school children to… LGBTQ+ propaganda…. It is outrageous that Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory dominate in many of our public institutions. I promise to support legislation to put a stop to all of this.”

MAGA Education Official Instructs Schools to Show Video of Him Praying for Donald Trump

This blog is originally appeared at LGBTQ Nation


The Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools recently spent $25,000 in state funds on Trump Bibles.

Ryan Walters, the controversial Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools, has directed school districts statewide to show a video of him praying for President-elect Donald Trump. This unusual and politically charged directive, issued amidst a recall effort against Walters, has sparked strong opposition from local school administrators. The video and accompanying order were sent out to schools on Thursday.

At least seven major Oklahoma school districts announced Friday that they will not show a video in which Superintendent Ryan Walters discusses the objectives of his newly established Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism, concluding with a prayer for former and future President Donald Trump.

The video, which carries a highly partisan tone, criticizes the “radical left” for attacking religious freedom in schools and accuses teacher unions of undermining patriotism.

“We will not tolerate that in any school in Oklahoma,” Walters declares in the video. “We want our students to be patriotic. We want our students to love this country, and we want all students’ religious liberty to be protected.”

The video wraps up with a prayer in which Walters asks for divine guidance for the nation’s leaders and specifically prays for Trump and his team.

“Dear God, thank you for all the blessings you’ve given our country. I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions. I pray in particular for Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country,” Walters says.

Edmond Public Schools Superintendent Angela Grunewald informed parents on Friday that her district will not disrupt its locally approved curriculum to show Walters’ video.

Grunewald emphasized that her district will continue to teach the Oklahoma state standards and the curriculum set by the local school board. “Any changes to that would be based on local decisions,” she said, citing a recent ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that upheld the authority of local school districts to make such decisions.

Similarly, Midwest City-Del City Public Schools Superintendent Rick Cobb told the Oklahoma Voice that his district will not show the video. “We do not believe he has the statutory authority to require us to share this content,” Cobb said.

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office supported this stance, declaring the mandate unenforceable. “Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents’ rights, local control, and individual free-exercise rights,” said Attorney General spokesperson Phil Bacharach.

Newly sworn-in Democratic state Sen. Mark Mann, a former member of the Oklahoma City Board of Education, also urged other districts to resist the mandate. “When Oklahoma needs to make gains in reading and math scores, the last thing we need to be doing is pushing the superintendent’s blatant, self-serving political agenda,” Mann remarked.

Walters’ controversial order, which is seen as unenforceable, accompanies his ongoing effort to distribute 55,000 Bibles to Oklahoma schools. On the same day his prayer video was released, Walters posted another video celebrating the arrival of the first 500 Bibles in AP Government classrooms.

Walters’ budget request was specifically aimed at purchasing a version of the Bible known as the “Trump Bible,” which combines the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Old and New Testaments into a single Christian nationalist text. The initial purchase of these Bibles amounted to $25,000.

Walters has been mentioned as a potential candidate for Secretary of Education in Trump’s second-term Cabinet. Both Walters and Trump have advocated for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education.

Not just Florida. More than a dozen states propose so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills – NPR

This blog originally appeared at NPR News.

Florida first. Alabama follows. Legislators in Louisiana and Ohio are currently debating legislation that is similar to the Florida statute. A similar bill will be his top priority during the following session, according to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

At least a dozen states across the country are proposing new legislation that, in some ways, will resemble Florida’s recent contentious bill, which some opponents have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”

Read Full Article – https://www.npr.org/2022/04/10/1091543359/15-states-dont-say-gay-anti-transgender-bills


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