A video from a cell phone that has been making the rounds on social media shows a transgender student at Alpine High School being attacked by a fellow classmate.
In the video, the classmate, who appears to be wearing a sports jersey of some kind, is seen wrestling the student to the ground and repeatedly punching him.
The victim, who spoke with the Odessa, Texas-based CBS affiliate KOSA, says the attack was unprovoked, and began after the attacker cussed at him, and then began shoving and punching him in the face while two of the attacker’s friends laughed.
“[H]e said it’s because he didn’t like me and he didn’t like who I was, that I just pissed him off,” the victim, whose name is being kept confidential for his own safety, said.
Even though the video has been viewed thousands of times, there are no consequences for the aggressor because the attack occurred off school property on a weekend.
Alpine Independent School District Superintendent Becky McCutchen says that, for those reasons, there’s nothing the district can do unless the police make an arrest.
“People need to understand this happened off campus and the school district, we’ve done everything we can to ensure the safety of all our students,” McCutchen said in defense of the school district. “And never would we condone something of that matter.”
But the victim says he’s been bullied and frequently harassed at school, even after the attack.
“I had kids pretty much saying that I deserve to be dead and that he should have killed me,” he said.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, one of three candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor this year, said that transgender people who refuse to use the bathroom matching their assigned sex at birth should be forced to urinate or defecate on public street corners.
Robinson, known for his anti-gay diatribes and outspoken opposition to LGBTQ visibility and civil rights, made the comments during a recent speech at a campaign event in Cary, North Carolina.
Like many other Republican candidates for office, Robinson has focused intently on culture-war issues, including transgender rights, to rally social conservatives around his campaign.
A Russian court sentenced a woman to five days in prison for wearing a pair of rainbow-colored earrings, according to the human rights group Egida.
The ruling marks the second such time a person has been prosecuted following a recent Russian Supreme Court case declaring the so-called "LGBT movement" an extremist organization, which resulted in the banning of official LGBTQ organizations and raids of LGBTQ-centric establishments.
As reported by Egida on its Telegram channel, law enforcement agents tasked with combating "extremism" detained the woman after a group of "aggressive people" approached her and her friend at a local café and began filming them.
Several LGBTQ candidates were successful in yesterday's "Super Tuesday" primaries, with some winning their party's nomination and others moving on to runoff elections.
Candidates appeared on the ballot in six different states: Texas, California, Arkansas, Tennessee, Vermont, and North Carolina, with several candidates poised to become historic "firsts" should they emerge victorious in general elections later this year.
In Texas, Molly Cook, running in the Houston-based 15th State Senate District, placed second, with 21% of the vote.
Because none of the Democratic candidates in the primary reached the 50% plus one vote threshold needed to win the primary, Cook will face off against State Rep. Jarvis Johnson in a runoff election on May 28.
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