Students at Bartram Trail High School stomp on a Pride flag (left) and wave a makeshift Confederate flag — Images: Twitter
A Florida school district is promising action after high school students waved Confederate flags and yelled anti-gay slurs at members of a Gay-Straight Alliance club.
Students at Bartram Trail High School in St. Johns County held the anti-LGBTQ rally after school on Friday, Sept. 17, Action News Jax reports.
Video of the incident shows multiple students standing near members of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and yelling anti-LGBTQ slurs at them, including, “There’s only two genders, faggot.”
One mother, who didn’t want to be identified in order to protect her family, said that her daughter had a Pride flag ripped out of her hand.
That flag was later stomped on by members of the rally, who were also waving homemade Confederate flags.
“It was terrifying, it was absolutely terrifying,” the mother said.
Her daughter was “approached by one of the boys, who started yelling at her saying, ‘You’re gay. You have no rights,’ and kind of spitting at her. She walked past it and got on her bus.”
The mother is now urging for the students involved in the rally to be expelled. She has also sent videos of the incident to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
“Enough is enough,” she said. It is time for that school board to take action at that school, and it needs some serious new leadership.”
She added: “I think if you show that level of hate or attacked at people just for people being who they are, there’s no tolerance for that.”
Another mother told News4Jax that the video she watched was “shocking” and “scary.”
“It made me wonder what could possibly happen at this school to put students in danger,” she said. “And it was kind of akin to videos you would see in the early 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement.”
The mother added that she was “very scared to see that kind of hate. To me this could be described as a hate crime happening on the campus where my child is at school.”
The school district confirmed that it is “actively addressing” the incident, with a spokesperson telling Action News Jax that the students involved “will receive consequences that align with our student code of conduct.”
“This behavior is not acceptable and is not indicative of the culture and students at BTHS,” they added. “It is very disappointing that these students handled themselves in this way.”
St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office said that it had received videos from parents and would work with the district if necessary.
A masked assailant threw a sharp rock through the front window of a gay couple's home in Northeast D.C., striking one of the men in the head.
The attack occurred last Friday in the city’s Kingman Park neighborhood, just as WorldPride weekend festivities were set to begin.
Surveillance video captured the assault. In the footage, a masked individual approaches the couple’s house -- decorated with rainbow Pride flags in the front yard -- and hurls a rock through the front window before fleeing. A cry can be heard from inside the home.
Jackson Vogel has been sentenced to life without parole for strangling his cellmate -- 19-year-old Micah Laureano, a Black gay man -- inside Green Bay Correctional Institution in what prosecutors described as a racially and homophobically motivated killing.
The Wisconsin inmate was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide by a jury last month.
Before sentencing, Vogel -- who was already serving a 20-year term for attempting to kill his mother in 2016, when he was just 16 -- told Brown County Circuit Judge Donald Zuidmulder he was "sorry" for his actions, although he did not appear to show any signs of regret.
Gina Ortiz Jones was elected mayor of San Antonio in a runoff election on June 7.
The victory was historic, as Jones is not only San Antonio's first out LGBTQ mayor but the first Asian-American female mayor of a major city in Texas and the first female mayor in Texas to have served in a war.
(She's a former Air Force officer and Iraq War veteran who previously served as Under Secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration.)
Jones is also the first mayor since 2005 to not have previously served on the city council and will serve a four-year term.
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