Trans school board member quits after anti-LGBTQ group turns NC meetings into ‘circus’

A transgender school board trustee in North Carolina said she resigned after repeated anti-LGBTQ attacks by a minister at board meetings.

She did so hoping to staunch the attacks and the hate group behind them, Peyton O’Connor explained in her Dec. 5 resignation letter she posted to Facebook.

“Y’all, I’ve made the difficult decision to resign from the Asheville City Schools Board of Education,” wrote O’Connor, the first transgender member of the board. “While I have enjoyed the experience, I was also firmly aware upon being appointed to the board of the probability of being targeted as a transwoman at some point given the current state of LGBTQIA+ issues in our country.”

On Facebook, she added that “while the work of the board has never been easy, it really was a labor of love” for her.

O’Connor detailed how a local minister named Ronald Gates had been disrupting school board meetings and accusing the board of ‘indoctrinating’ students to be LGBTQ+.

During public comment at a Nov. 16 meeting, he repeatedly misgendered her and refused to refer to her by the proper honorific, even after the board’s chair interrupted and asked him to stop, the Asheville Citizen Times reported.

’I am merely an easy vessel’

O’Connor said Gates “identifies himself as an ‘Ambassador’ for the Alliance Defending Freedom,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center identified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group in 2016.

Gates, his church Greater Works Church 1, and Alliance Defending Freedom did not respond to McClatchy News’ requests for comment. On its website, ADF describes itself as a “legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, parental rights, and God’s design for marriage and family.”

O’Connor described the transphobic attacks Gates levied against her during board meetings, in which he said that not only O’Connor, but all LGBTQIA+ people exist only because of “indoctrination.”

“On the surface, it appears that [he] is attacking me, but I am merely an easy vessel and a target to allow him to wedge a political divide that will ultimately whittle away at the thin layers of protections we have for our queer students, staff, and family,” she said in the letter. “I can’t in good conscience give him the foothold and I believe that stepping away may give him less of an opportunity to sow divisiveness.”

‘His views are ignorant’

She warned her fellow board members that the attacks jeopardize students’ safety in the school system.

“His words and actions put our students’ lives in danger,” she said in the letter. “His views are ignorant, disgusting, and vile. He is repeating the same rhetoric that has been used over and over again throughout history to justify the literal murder and persecution of the LGBTQIA+ community. It is the type of hatred that resulted in the deaths of queer people in a night club just a few days ago and it is part of [a] larger system of oppression that is still very much present in the lives of queer people today.”

She urged the board to learn from the attacks and work against the group’s efforts to disrupt school board meetings.

“We have to start speaking more assertively against the forces of hate and religious theocracy,” she wrote. “We shouldn’t have to revisit civil rights issues that have already been determined. Speak up.”

If you are struggling or thinking of harming yourself, you can reach out to a counselor with the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) young people. Text ‘START’ to 678-678 or call 1-866-488-7386.

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