A middle school teacher in Kansas has been asked to resign and is unlikely to ever return to the classroom in the school district where he teaches after showing his students a gay anti-bullying film.
Tom Leahy, a social studies teacher at Conway Springs Middle School in Conway Springs, Kansas, says he showed the film Love Is All You Need?to three of his eighth-grade history classes after an anti-gay incident in the classroom. As part of a class project, Leahy had instructed his students to create fictional colonies, each with its own Bill of Rights. But one of the groups said that gay people were not allowed in their colony, upsetting some other groups in the classroom.
“I was expecting fairly positive kinds of colonies: ‘Do things we think are right, and be nice,'” Leahy told The Wichita Eagle. But it just kind of got twisted around, and it became a place where certain people weren’t allowed. Then the issue of gay vs. straight came up, and a lot of them were not allowing gays into their colony and stuff like that. … There were some hard feelings. Kids were getting upset.”
As a result of the classroom controversy, Leahy decided to show Love Is All You Need?, a 2013 short film about a young straight girl who is bullied to the point of suicide in a world where the majority of people are gay or lesbian. But several parents complained after they heard of the film’s content, including a scene where the main character commits suicide. Other parents felt the movie was an attack on religion’s treatment of homosexuality, particularly the Catholic Church.
“I wanted kids to see that and see that different perspective and how would they feel if they were this young girl and bullied in her belief in liking boys which is totally opposite of the world we see,” Leahy told local CBS affiliate KWCH. “I think it made them think. During, after the video, I had a few questions and I talked about them. They said some of it wasn’t fair and some of it, you know we’d never do that to somebody and I said yeah, that’s true but that’s what this movie is trying to point out.”
Unfortunately, Leahy did not get permission from either parents or school administrators to show the video, which resulted from his removal from the classroom. Typically, with controversial films, videos or other presentations, teachers are expected to offer parents a chance to “opt out” — temporarily remove their children from class so that they don’t see the controversial material in question.
Leahy, who had been planning to retire next year, has been placed on leave and said he doesn’t see himself returning to teaching. He said he reached a mutual decision with the district and the superintendent that he would not be teaching in Conway Springs. However, he has not turned in a resignation — and he doesn’t regret his decision to show the movie.
“I believe in what I showed,” Leahy told KWCH. “And I believe that not just Conway Springs but in so many little towns we’re afraid of our own shadow. And I think if we learn more about these shadows we might be surprised and say you know what, these people are okay. They’re not out to hurt us or to change us or make us be a different person.”
A measure claiming to protect children from adult websites, which recently became law in Kansas, could potentially block minors from viewing any LGBTQ content.
The law, passed by the Republican-led State House of Representatives and Senate, requires websites that feature content "harmful to minors" to verify that visitors in Kansas are 18 or older.
To verify their age, visitors to such websites would have to provide their government-issued IDs.
Under the bill, any website in which 25% or more of its viewed pages in any month contain "material that is harmful to minors" is required to verify the age of visitors from Kansas.
A Pennsylvania school board canceled an appearance by Maulik Pancholy at a local middle school's anti-bullying assembly due to concerns over his "lifestyle."
The Cumberland Valley School District school board voted unanimously to cancel the gay actor's scheduled May 22 appearance at Mountain View Middle School in Mechanicsburg, a town of 9,000 people in the state's center, just 10 miles outside Harrisburg.
Pancholy, who played Jonathan on the hit TV show 30 Rock, Sanjay in Weeds, and voiced the character of Baljeet for Disney's Phineas & Ferb, is also an author of novels for young adults, including The Best at It, the story of a gay Indian-American boy and his experience dealing with bullying in a small Midwestern town, and Nikhil Out Loud, about a group of eighth-grade theater kids rising up against homophobia in their community.
A Milwaukee school principal has been sued in federal court by a gay couple who allege he bullied, harassed, threatened, and assaulted their son for having two same-sex parents, violating the child's civil rights in the process.
The parents, referred to as M.P. and T.L. in the lawsuit, claim that Kasongo Kalumbula allegedly mistreated their son because of his family's makeup.
The lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, asks for a jury trial and seeks an undetermined amount in damages.
It alleges that Kalumbula, who served as the assistant principal, and later, acting principal, of the Milwaukee French Immersion School from September 2018 to October 2021, physically and verbally abused the child -- who was in first grade when the harassment started -- and routinely singled him out for discipline.
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