A Dallas ISD employee headlined an anti-bullying event that discussed “religious or faith-based LGBTQIA+ discrimination,” according to documents obtained in an open records request by The Dallas Express.
Mahoganie Gaston, Dallas ISD’s coordinator of support services for LGBTQ youth, spoke at an event in October 2022 hosted by Resource Center and the Cathedral of Hope.
Resource Center is an LGBTQ clinic in Dallas that provides transgender hormone usage and referral letters for cross-gender surgeries.
Cathedral of Hope is a church centered on LGBTQ activism that previously held a service blessing drag queens and a “family-friendly” drag show. The church has a website on how to support transgender members of the community with references to sex-altering surgeries. It cites local and national LGBTQ groups as resources, such as PFLAG, GLSEN, The Trevor Project, Dallas Voice, and Resource Center.
Elise Matthews of Resource Center invited Gaston to speak on a panel at the event, according to emails obtained by The Dallas Express. Gaston accepted the invitation, which Matthews responded to with a list of questions expected to be asked by the panel moderator.
“What kinds of concerns do you have around religious or faith-based LGBTQIA+ discrimination?” one question read.
“What resources do you think our communities need to overcome obstacles put up by religious or faith beliefs or practices?” another asked.
“What concerns do you have that relate specifically to Texas laws & legislation and attitudes towards the LGBTQIA+ community?”
“How can we build confidence and resilience in gender non-conforming and LGBTQIA+ youth?”
Gaston and Matthews did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the communications teams for DISD or Resource Center.
Rev. Neil Thomas, a senior pastor at Cathedral of Hope, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Dallas ISD and Resource Center worked closely together for years to push LGBTQ activism in schools, as revealed in a series of reports by The Dallas Express. The school district asked the clinic to advise them on how to better enable “youth transitioning.”
They partnered together on the district’s Out for Safe Schools program to conduct trainings for educators to learn about teaching LGBTQ students. The district and clinic deleted mentions of the program from their website after a series of reports from DX.
Documents previously obtained by DX showed Dallas ISD struggled to convince teachers to sign up for the Out for Safe Schools program. Additional documents showed the district appeared to bypass the proper certification for the program. It is unclear if the program is still active.