Scotland made history recently by becoming the first nation in the world to mandate teaching about LGBTQ history and social movements in public school curriculum. 

State schools will be required to teach pupils about the history of LGBTI equalities and movements, as well as tackling homophobia and transphobia and exploring LGBTI identity, after ministers accepted in full the recommendations of a working group led by the Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign. There will be no exemptions or opt-outs to the policy, which will embed LGBTI inclusive education across the curriculum and across subjects and which the Scottish government believes is a world first.

Jordan Daly, the co-founder of TIE, said the “destructive legacy” of section 28 had come to an end. This legislation, introduced in 1988, banned local authorities in the UK from “promoting” homosexuality, until it was eventually repealed in Scotland 2001 and in the rest of the UK two years later.

Daly said: “This is a monumental victory for our campaign, and a historic moment for our country. The implementation of LGBTI inclusive education across all state schools is a world first. In a time of global uncertainty, this sends a strong and clear message to LGBTI young people that they are valued here in Scotland.”

Incredible. I can’t wait until the day when this is the standard around the world.

Ready to be furious out of your mind on so many levels?

Last week in Virginia, Stafford County Middle School held a lockdown drill to give students practice responding to an active shooter. During the drill, students are required to take shelter in the nearest bathroom or locker room. 

But administrators didn’t know what to do with one student, a transgender girl. So while the other students took shelter, as they would during an active shooter situation, the girl was told to sit first in the gym while teachers discussed their decision, then in the locker room hallway away from the other students. 

“The student was forced to watch the adults charged with her care, debate the safest place (for the other students) to have her shelter,” Equality Stafford wrote. “During this debate, she was instructed to sit in the gym with a teacher until the drill was complete, away from her peers and identified as different. After some additional debate, she was made to sit in the locker room hall way [sic], by the door away from her peers.”

Equality Stafford slammed the school’s response, noting that they essentially treated the student as a danger to the other students.

“During an event that prepares children to survive an attack by actual assailants, she was treated as if she was so much of a danger to peers that she was left exposed and vulnerable,” they wrote.

Stafford County Middle School’s spokesperson Sherrie Johnson issued a statement following outcry over the school’s actions.

“The new superintendent has requested a review of all protocols and procedures to ensure that all children are treated with dignity and respect,” said Johnson. “We take such matters very seriously and they will be addressed. The welfare of all students is of the utmost importance for SCPS.”

We are living in a world so terrifying that children have to rehearse where they’d go in case of a school shooter, and the faculty can’t respect a transgender girl enough to quickly assign her a designated “safe” place with her peers? Shameful and scary. 

This fall, Massachusetts public schools will have the chance to embrace curriculum that includes LGBTQ-focused lessons in topics like English, history, and health. 

The new curriculum is meant to help LGBTQ students see themselves more clearly in the lessons they learn at school each day. The curriculum is optional, but officials hope schools will take the initiative to include it.

Individual lessons will cover subjects such as the Stonewall uprising ― the 1969 clash between gay bar patrons and New York City police often cited as the beginning of the gay rights movement ― and works by LGBTQ authors such as Langston Hughes, a representative for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education told HuffPost.

“These units are an important way of affirming LGBTQ individuals’ presence and contributions, and we are grateful to the Massachusetts educators who developed them,” the department said in a statement. Educators from the Massachusetts Safe Schools Program for LGBTQ Students and the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth teamed up to develop the lesson plans.

No public school will be required to use the material, as curricular decisions are made by individual school districts in the state. But proponents hope schools will embrace the resource.

“If students don’t see themselves in the curriculum, they are not as likely to pay attention,” Corey Prachniak-Rincon, who directs the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth, told the Herald. “It is a huge demand we hear from teachers. They recognize part of the reason why LGBTQ students feel excluded is they’re not reflected and that part of their identity is ignored.”

This is hugely important. It’s far harder to do well in school when you don’t feel like the material is reflective or inclusive of you. This is an important step, and I hope we’ll see similar curriculum developed across the country. 

This fall, Rockville, Maryland’s newest public elementary school will be the first in the district named for an openly gay person: Bayard Rustin. 

Advocates say naming the school Bayard Rustin Elementary is a way to fight stigma, honor a civil rights legend who is often overlooked, and uplift and validate LGBTQ students. 

“As a queer student, even in a progressive area, I was raised in a society that still attaches shame to my identity,” Jamie Griffith, a senior from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, testified to the board. “So a Bayard Rustin Elementary School is not only a well-deserved homage to a civil rights leader and hero, but a way to break stigma and give hope to future students who no longer have to feel trapped in the closet.”

Naming the school after Rustin would also raise awareness of an activist who’s largely been ignored by history because of his identity, advocates said Thursday. Rustin stood alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement and was a leading organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. […]

The recognition of LGBTQ identities is gaining additional significance in the current political climate, testified Gabriel Acevero, a Montgomery Village resident who is running for state delegate.

“We have a hostile administration that is intent on erasing LGBTQ folks, recently taking us off the Census and banning transgender Americans from serving their country,” Acevero said. “Now more than ever we need to affirm LGBTQ youth, and that’s why Bayard Rustin is such a powerful name for this school.”

Could not love this more. 

At least three school districts around the country are continuing to enforce potentially hostile restroom policies for transgender students after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights refused to investigate student complaints, HuffPost has learned.

One of those students, 18-year-old Preston Curts, a transgender male senior at a high school in Florida, originally filed a discrimination claim back in 2016, under the Obama administration. He filed a complaint with the U.S. Education Department challenging Marion County Schools’ rule that banned transgender students from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender identity. He hoped things would change, at least before he graduated.

In December, Curts’ complaint was abruptly dismissed by the Trump administration, quashing any possibility that he will get to spend his last few months of school in an environment where he’s allowed to be himself.

Disgusting. Read the whole piece at the link above. 

Near Dallas, Texas, an elementary school teacher has been placed on administrative leave after asking her school’s officials to consider adding LGBTQ-inclusive language to school nondiscrimination policies.

Stacy Bailey, a teacher at Mansfield Independent School District’s Charlotte Anderson Elementary School, was recently named Teacher of the Year. Now, she’s on leave for months and has been instructed not to contact students, parents or staff. The school refuses to acknowledge why she was removed.

In August, Bailey emailed district officials in the hopes of discussing adding “sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression” in the district’s anti-discrimination policy, the Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday.

“I think it is important that MISD starts movement towards progress now,” Bailey’s email, obtained by the Dallas Morning News, read. “We have many LGBTQ teachers, students, and families in this district. We deserve the right to feel protected by our district.” […]

Dozens of students and parents attended a school board meeting last week to express their support for Bailey, who one parent said “brings diversity to this classroom.”

“She accepts my child for who she is and she loves her for it,” the parent said, according to the Dallas Morning News. “I’m perplexed how this person who everyone seems to adore can be kept from our children.“

What the actual fuck. Can we please stop taking amazing teachers away from kids just because they dared to include everyone? 

Earlier this month, Jocelyn Morffi married the love of her life in a beautiful beachside ceremony. But days later, she was fired from her job as a first-grade Catholic school teacher – because the love of her life is a woman.

Morffi had taught at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School in Miami for more than six years. School and church officials say by loving and marrying her now-wife, Natasha Hass, she broke the contract she signed when she got her job saying she would uphold Catholic ideals.

The school told parents that a “difficult decision” had been made to terminate Morffi, didn’t offer a reason for her departure, and asked for prayers. 

Instead, about a dozen angry parents showed up at the school the next day, demanding an explanation and speaking to gathered news cameras.

“We were extremely livid. They treated her like a criminal; they didn’t even let her get her things out of her classroom,” Cintia Cini, whose child was in Morffi’s class, told the Miami Herald. Cini and other parents said they didn’t know or care about Morffi’s sexual orientation.

“Our only concern was the way she was with our children, the way she taught our children, and this woman by far was one of the best teachers out there,” Cini said. […]

Now, parents at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School say they are fighting for the reinstatement of a woman who not only taught their children to read and write, but also ran a volunteer organization called #teachHope70x7 that enlisted students to distribute meals to the homeless on weekends.

“We were completely outraged, all of the parents,” Samantha Mills, whose child was in Morffi’s class last year, told the Herald. “This teacher in particular has made such a contribution to the school. She never imposes her personal beliefs on others. She just does everything in love.”

Despite its discriminatory behavior, the school receives state-funded scholarship money – which means Florida taxpayer dollars are going to religious schools that kick out LGBTQ teachers. UGH. 

Here’s an example of a school completely failing its students, and the parents coming through on the right side of history. Best wishes to this amazing teacher and her students, who just lost a fantastic role model in the classroom.