A group of LGBT+ students were subjected to homophobic chanting during their school homecoming in Kansas last week.
Members of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance Club participated in their annual parade Olathe Northwest High School, but were met with taunts of “Make America straight again” from a small number of the crowd.
They were subjected to numerous slurs and dirt being thrown at them, as well as being told to go kill themselves.
What’s more, the harassment even spilled onto social media, with a screenshot of a Snapchat post captioned: “Notice how all the gays are all ugly they’re like the leftovers nobody really wants.”
The school have said that they taking the incident very seriously, and are investigating the incident as well as supporting all of the students who have been affected.
“What was supposed to be fun and joyous and celebratory and inclusive, turned out to be ugly,” one mother told KMBC Fox 4.
She added that her daughter “was very sad and deflated, and she said several members of the group were crying.”
Teachers at the school said that they did not witness the abuse, and would have acted if they had done so.
“We didn’t see it, if we’d seen it, we would’ve stopped it immediately,” Assistant Superintendent Eric Dugan told Fox 4.
“Kids do a nice job of doing things when the adults aren’t watching.”
The Gender-Sexuality Alliance Club issued a statement on Twitter following the abuse, saying that the experience “will plague the minds of some of us forever.”
However, they finished the message with a defiant tone: “No-one’s gonna shut us down. We will not live in silence. Not anymore.”
