By: Anna Miller and Kaitlyn Shepherd
Lakes Middle School in Coeur d’Alene invited children as young as 12 to attend a Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club meeting where students learned about LGBT issues without the knowledge or parental consent.
Parents and officials may be tempted to think this is an isolated incident. However, there are at least 28 Idaho middle and high school GSAs working to promote the sexualization of children. GSAs are influential in public schools across the country. The activist administrators and teachers who run the GSA clubs recruit children as young as elementary school and tell them to lie to their parents.
GSAs are school clubs for LGBT youth and their allies that condition students to become activists. They originally emerged as “safe spaces” for trans and queer students, but have evolved into “vehicles for profound social change” in the areas of racial and gender justice. Teachers and staff recruit students to join the club, and then the students run the AGK.
The Gay & Straight Alliance Club at Fairmont Junior High School in the Boise School District is a typical example of a GSA club meeting.
First of all, the students present are asked to keep the conversations confidential. Meetings begin with students sharing their pronouns and the intersectional LGBT identity they choose to align with or if they are an “ally.” The group then hosts Q&A sessions where students can quiz teachers or administrators about transgender, gender identity, sexualities, and other LGBT topics. Guest speakers are sometimes invited to meetings. Students and “counselors” give presentations to students on new LGBT topics. Parental permission is not required for a student to join the club.
GSAs can provide students with LGBT resources, which include breast binders, specially designed breast compression garments for young girls seeking genital mutilation surgery, and contact information for gender transition clinics. For example, the GSA Club at Lake City High School in the Coeur d’Alene School District gave students advice on chest fixation. Fairmont Junior High School’s Gay & Straight Alliance refers high school students to gender-affirming healthcare providers and therapists.
GSA encourages students to attend local Pride events. For example, Skyline High School’s GSA in the Idaho Falls School District encouraged students to attend the Loud & Proud Drag Show.
Members of the Wood River High School Pride Club attended a Drag Queen event at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden. Students created a spinning game in which passers-by could answer questions such as “How do you support members of the LGBT community?” What’s your favorite queer movie? Favorite queer celebrity? The night ended with the students watching a drag show.
GSA encourages students to participate in political activism for the LGBT cause. For example, East Junior High in Boise asked club members to attend the “Rally in Support of Transgender Students.” Every high school in Boise has a GSA, according to the Gay & Straight Alliance of Fairmont Junior High, and GSAs also exist at the majority of high schools in the Boise School District. The militant pressure from these clubs in Boise schools helps explain why more than a hundred students protested a bill that would have protected teens from puberty blockers.
Activist groups, such as the North Idaho Pride Alliance, are seeking to organize more GSA clubs for young children. The efforts of these types of interest groups led to the opening of GSAs even in rural schools, including Rigby High School and Middleton High School. At the request of these groups, other GSAs will continue to emerge each year.
Taking kids to drag shows or encouraging gender transition surgery isn’t what most parents consider a “safe space” at school.
Representative Barbara Ehardt presented a simple policy solution in the 2022 legislative session: require parental notification and consent before students join a school club. The bill was denied a hearing and died on Chairman Lance Clow’s Republican-controlled Education Committee.
Although the ideas promoted by these clubs are rooted in a pernicious ideology that sexualizes children and is opposed by many Idaho parents, none of this has stopped them from gaining influence in schools in Idaho and across the country. . Gender activists rely on public subsidies and the vulnerability of children to advance their ideology. Who will care to stop them?
