Vote now for LGBTQ Nation’s 2022 Hero Protecting the Children
Izzy Dieker, who spoke out and instigated reforms after she punished at school for saying she’s a lesbian; the Pendleton Heights Gay-Straight Alliance, which won sued their school – and won – when they were forced to keep a low profile; school board chair Kelsey Waits, who did what she needed to do to protect her trans daughter who was outed and harassed; the PFLAG v.
Abbott plaintiffs, who stopped the state from investigating the supportive parents of trans kids as child abusers; and Charlee Corra, a teacher and one of the heirs to the Disney fortune who came out to speak out against the Don’t Say Gay law.These five nominees defended LGBTQ kids’ rights and made the future a better place.
Vote now for LGBTQ Nation’s 2022 Hero Protecting the Children. Izzy Dieker In January 2021, 13 year-old Izzy Dieker was riding home from school in rural Kansas when the driver overheard her tell another student that she’s a lesbian.That’s when the driver pulled over and wrote Dieker up for “unacceptable language.” When the teen talked to the school’s principal, he told her it was “inappropriate” to use the word “lesbian” near young students and she was suspended.She said that she became the talk of the school and a target for homophobic harassment because many students took the principal’s side.Dieker stood up for herself and with some help from the ACLU of Kansas she got the district to conduct a Title IX investigation, which found that anti-LGBTQ harassment was a “pervasive” problem at the school.
The district found that the driver and the principal violated both district policy and federal law and were fired.By August, Dieker’s complaint had led to the school district changing its anti-discrimination policies.“It made me upset to.
