A parental rights organization is calling on Dallas Independent School District to ditch its LGBTQ Youth department.
Texas Family Project, an organization that supports “policies and initiatives that empower parents to raise their children in safe, nurturing environments,” told Texas Scorecard that the department engages in ideological programming.
“It is clear that the leadership of DISD is not concerned with the enrichment of the students with whom they are entrusted. We are constantly learning of new ways they seek to confuse and indoctrinate children,” claimed Brady Gray, president of Texas Family Project.
“The hundreds of thousands of parents in DISD deserve better and should take action by attending school board meetings and demanding these departments be shut down and their employees removed,” he added.
LGBTQ Youth puts on various events that allow district students to “learn more about and celebrate LGBT diversity.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, some Texas school districts and higher education institutions have been criticized for endorsing or catering to the LGBTQ community with events and policies.
“Students who identify as Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and other identities often experience harassment, indifference, bullying and exclusion,” LGBTQ Youth’s website reads. “This page is dedicated to providing students and teachers with resources to ensure that all students have a safe school experience.”
One of the department’s programs is called “Out for Safe Schools.” It was launched in 2018. In addition to providing “LGBTQ-affirming” training, the program also seeks to establish Genders & Sexualities (formerly Gay-Straight) Alliance groups at district campuses.
LGBTQ Youth also provides a number of resources pertaining to transgender students and sex alteration. One of the resources the department links to on its page is the Genecis transgender youth clinic in Dallas, which used to provide counseling and sex alteration hormones to minors.
A new law, set to go into effect on September 1, prohibits a plethora of sex alteration procedures and transgender hormones usage from being provided to minors.
Meanwhile, several North Texas school systems have also pushed back against requiring students and staff to use non-biological pronouns.
Carroll ISD, which recently changed its pronoun policy, claimed that its new rule is written in a manner that protects students and employees from compelled speech “that would violate the speaker’s constitutionally protected rights.”
Still, others claim it is important for LGBTQ students to have access to resources like the ones made available by LGBTQ Youth.
“We are allowing a safe place [for them] to be themselves,” said Dallas ISD chemistry teacher Genevieve Ma’ye back in 2018, when the “Out for Safe Schools” program first launched, per NBC 5 DFW. “Even if they can’t be it at home; they can at least be it here so they are not so depressed, they are not thinking about suicide they don’t want to end their lives they actually want to start living their lives their way.”
