Heated Public Comment Session Leads to Verbal Attacks by Parents Against Students and School Board Members

A meeting of the Omaha Public Schools Board lasting over two hours became heated Monday night as parents, rallied by at least two anti-LGBT “family” groups, chose to verbally attack board members and LGBTQ students during a hearing to determine if OPS will adopt protection policies for transgender students.Â

â€œYou donâ€™t need boys going to girls bathrooms, you donâ€™t need girls going to boys bathrooms. â€¦ Itâ€™s an appalling thing when you try to make it all inclusive,â€ Charles Billups said, as theÂ Omaha World-HeraldÂ reports.Â â€œYouâ€™re asking for more trouble. Itâ€™s like opening Pandoraâ€™s box. Youâ€™re trying to destroy the very fabric of what America is all about.â€

First speaker against the transgender bathroom policy. Saying young girls will be sexually abused. @action3news pic.twitter.com/7on22ciwd4 â€” Nick Starling (@NickStarlingTV) August 15, 2016

â€œJust because itâ€™s happening across the country, doesnâ€™t mean it has to be in Omaha, Nebraska,â€ Pastor Eileen McCarty told the board.Â â€œWe know God made male and female.â€

PastorÂ Delicia Mendez, according toÂ Omaha World-HeraldÂ reporter Erin Duffy, told the board she believes sending children to school now is terrifying, there are no morals anymore, and asked if they wanted God’s destruction:

What do we want? For god to destory us? Like in Sodom and Gomorrah?” Mendez said â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

God formed Adam & Eve, not Adam and Adam or Adam and Eve, she said â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

The rhetoric became so charged that school board member Yolanda Williams chastised anti-LGBT parents.

“It’s absolutely despicable that adults come to a public meeting to show pure hatred, bigotry, to insult our students,” OPS board memberÂ Yolanda Williams told parents.Â Â

“This has gotten out of hand,” Williams said. Adults are putting down students. She doesn’t care if she’s re-elected to board for saying it â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

“Look at the room right now,” she said “The level of disrepect that has come to this board … it’s saddening.” â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

One parent responded:

Maris Bentley stood up and started yelling at board. “Now who’s doing the bullying?” she said. “I’m not a bigot, I’m not a hater.” â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

“Have you lost your minds?” Bentley said. “How else can I account for people who believe a boy can be a girl or vice versa?” â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

One student, who is transgender,Â addressed the board, explaining,Â â€œI love to learn and Iâ€™m dedicated and passionate about my education.â€

â€œI want to focus on those goals. I donâ€™t want my identity to be an issue. Itâ€™s not fair to turn my gender identity into a huge political statement, when itâ€™s just who I am,â€ the unnamed student said.

Aaron Burbach, who KETV reports is transgender, told the board how some students “decided to follow me out of the bathroom, loudly debating whether I was male or female. I find it a little bit funny that people complain about transgender people putting other people in danger in a restroom.”

At least two anti-LGBT groups who are opposed to allowing protections for transgender students and have been advocating against them on social media and elsewhere were in attendance.Â

Mark Bonkiewicz, the head of Nebraskans for Founders Values, said,Â “Transgenderism is a mental disease and we pray for their recovery,” according to Omaha World-Herald reporter Eric Duffy. “No one can change his or her sex.”

Nate Grasz, the policy and research analyst for theÂ Nebraska Family Alliance,Â another anti-LGBT group, andÂ Karen Bowling, the group’s outreach director,Â also were on hand:

Bowling said tweaking non-discrimination policy will open door to allowing kids to use bathrooms & locker rooms of opposite sex â€” Erin Duffy (@eduff88) August 16, 2016

After all the anti-LGBT rhetoric had been spewed, the OPS board voted unanimously to include gender identity and gender expression protections in its nondiscrimination policy. The board will need to hold one more vote for the new policies to become official.

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Image: Screenshot viaÂ Omaha World-Herald

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