A Tennessee mother has recited some of the “awful” things that students have said to her gay daughter in a poignant speech at a Wilson County School board meeting.
During the board meeting on Monday 10 July, Lindsey Patrick-Wright shared a list of insults that have been shouted at her sixth-grader, Pippy, while the child was attending West Wilson Middle School in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. Some of the slurs she recited were: “My parents say I can’t talk to you because you’re gay,” “You don’t deserve to live,” “You’re going to hell,” and “My parents say you’re a pervert and if I beat you up, they wouldn’t care.”
In her speech, she continued to criticise her zone’s representative, Joseph Padilla, for proposing a policy that required teachers to tell parents if students identify as transgender. As noted by WSMV4, he also “compared being transgender to a mental illness” at the board meeting Monday night.
“My kid’s lucky. When they go home, they have a family that doesn’t believe their identity is a mental illness, Joe,” she said. “Not all kids have that support at home, and you all know that. How dare you propose taking away the one lifeline that a kid might have as a trusted teacher? How dare you propose taking away the ability for a teacher to be that lifeline? Shame on you!”
She expressed her disappointment towards Padilla’s colleagues for not speaking up about his policy, as she said it “proposed the force outing of trans students” and promoted “dangerous rhetoric”.
“We are not asking you all to understand our kids,” she concluded. “We are asking – we are begging you – if you cannot support our queer kids, leave them alone!”
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Patrick-Wright said that there was one negative comment that she left out in her speech, “My mom says it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”, referring to the bible story of Adam and Eve.
According to the mother, her child had a very simple response to this comment: “Well, I’m a lesbian, so I don’t want Adam or Steve.”
The parent specified that the bullying towards her child, who goes by both she and they pronouns, heightened in February of this year. “My kid shaved their head, and they did it in part because they were playing Uncle Fester,” she said, referring to the school’s musical production of The Addams Family.
She recalled that throughout the school year, Pippy came home upset “at least 30 per cent of the days, if not 50”.
After explaining that her child “primarily” heard these comments while on the bus home, she described some other moments in school when the bullying occurred. “It happened in the hallway, in the cafeteria, and on the bus. And those are three areas where it is very difficult for the staff and the teachers to moderate behaviour,” she said.
Patrick-Wright believed that the various anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced in the US have increased bullying towards her daughter. In Tennessee alone, 19 of these bills have been passed since 2015. “I think the teachers are doing the best job that they can. And I don’t blame the administrators,” she said. “I blame the elected officials who are allowing this rhetoric to be repeated in the homes.”
When asked how much bigotry she thought came from adults, she added: “All of it.”
The mother explained that after experiencing this bullying, Pippy has decided not to attend school in-person in the fall. “They advocated for themselves to attend virtual school so that they didn’t have to face this bullying every day,” Patrick-Wight said. “They’re excited about it, and we’ve got plenty of activities to keep them social.”
However, this isn’t to say that Pippy didn’t have a support system at school, as Patrick-Wright noted that there were two teachers and a counsellor who “did try to give [Pippy] a safe space at school”. While the mother noted that Pippy had many close friends in school, she still acknowledged that the other students’ behaviour was not appropriate.
“But my child should not have had to hear the awful things that they heard,” she said.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, she also noted that right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty have shown up to the Wilson County school board meetings, where they would call to ban books with LBGTQ+ content. However, according to Patrick-Wright, she hasn’t hesitated to speak up against Moms for Liberty, which advocates against curriculum that discusses LGBTQ+ rights.
“I’ve been getting up at board meetings this whole year to talk about book-banning and to talk about the epidemic of Moms for Liberty and what they’re doing to dismantle the public education system,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been focused on. I haven’t wanted to put my kid in the spotlight.”
Patrick-Wright shared that, outside of attending board meetings, she created a shirt with the slogan, “WILSON COUNTY VALUES,” which she and her child have tried to follow. The mom also wore this shirt during her speech at the meeting.
“I’m responsible for these shirts and I want to tell you why,” she said. “If I’m not here in person, I’m watching these meetings at home with my 13-year-old that goes to Wilson County Schools and we repeatedly see our zone representative, Joe Padilla, make bigoted comments and propose discriminatory policies that target LGBTQ students and say that he’s just representing Wilson County values.”
As noted by The Human Rights Campaign, Tennessee has enacted more anti-LGBTQ+ laws than any other state in the US. Out of the 19 laws, four of them have prevented “transgender students from playing sports consistent with their gender identity”.
The Independent has contacted Lindsey Patrick-Wright, Joseph Padilla, and Moms for Liberty for comment.
