‘Pansexual’ art teacher gets sacked after allowing kids to draw sexual identity flags

More and more examples of LGBT activist teachers seem to be pouring in weekly. One gaining attention comes from Cape Coral, Fla. where, as LGBTQ Nation describes it, a pansexual art teacher was fired after allowing students to draw Pride flags. As has become the norm, the story is a little more complicated and not entirely consistent in its reporting. Casey Scott, a middle school art teacher, describes the incident as simply a discussion that happened in which students volunteered their sexuality and gender identity to her in class. Initial reporting indicated she explained her own sexuality and then asked her students to draw pictures of their own.

In an interview with local news she described a different scenario in which she stated students approached her and began telling her they were nonbinary, transgender, and gay and then asked her if they could draw Pride flags representing their identities. Afterwards she hung them up on the door and later was told to remove them, which she described as crumpling them up in front of horrified students. The incident angered multiple parents and the school ended her contract stating she had violated state law surrounding curriculum.

While she argues, “a discussion happened in class and, because of that, now I’m fired,” she was within her 90-day probationary period as a new hire and the school was within its rights to terminate her employment for any cause. She insisted she was not made aware of any restrictions on topics of discussion with the students, saying: “not once did anyone from my administration ever explain to me any topic that I was not to allow or discuss… as a first-year art teacher in a reinstated class with zero art teaching experience it is reasonable to expect… a mentor to help oversee and give me guidance but, none was offered?”

Crystal Czyscon, a local LGBTQ advocate, demanded, “I would like to see a statement from the school board recognizing they have to have a mental health counselor come in and speak with the children impacted by their actions toward this teacher.” Scott as well expressed in her interview concern for the LGBT students impacted by the destruction of their art. The larger story seems to be lost in the emotional entitlement of the activists themselves.

Whether students were asked to draw pictures of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity or they chose to do so on their own, the exercise was inherently inappropriate. LGBT Pride flags cover dozens, if not hundreds of variations on concepts of sexuality and gender, but they do not include a “pride” design for cisgender and/or heterosexual individuals. The vast majority of the class was excluded as a result and would have felt pressured to choose one of the many options available in order to fit in.

Why the students allegedly approached the teacher in the first place to openly discuss their sexual and gender identities is another troubling area. Although the sources do not specify the grade she was teaching, the oldest a student would have been is 13. The flags shown in the photo provided by Scott show a lesbian pride flag, an asexual pride flag, a genderfluid and a rainbow flag, among upwards of 10 crumpled pieces of paper. How an organic discussion on advanced sexuality and gender identity occurred is also left to speculation.

What is most remarkable is the assertion that she never considered the topic to be of concern in the first place, arguing she was not specifically instructed not to discuss adult sexuality and gender. I remember when I was outed in high school in 1998, I attempted to talk to a sympathetic teacher who firmly explained that this was simply not something she could discuss with me. I even decided to force the issue by bringing it up in class and she, again, firmly instructed me to stop, recognizing that the classroom was not an open forum for me to express my personal issues and causes.

Modern teachers seem to feel an obligation and certainly a sense of entitlement to use their classroom as a group therapy session, viewing their students as peers they can share secrets with. Unfortunately, this has grown to become its own culture in which teachers position themselves as the sole source of safety for vulnerable students who are assumed to have no one else to turn to. This generation of teachers see themselves as an underground railroad of sorts to ensure students can freely express their “true selves” without the judgement or restrictions of their parents.

This has been demonstrated by the growing discovery of “transition closets,” where schools offer students the opportunity to change into opposite-gender clothing once out of the watchful eye of their parents. The entire system seems to be designed to hide children from their parents and teach them to rely on teachers or other administrators for protection and validation.

The motivation behind all of this can be seen in my own generation’s experience with coming out in the late 90s and how we collectively felt isolated, abandoned and stigmatized, often by the adults who were supposed to be teaching us about life. We grew up to become teachers ourselves or professors educating a new generation of teachers and we wanted to make sure students never experienced that again.

The problem is that these efforts went too far, and they never evolved beyond the frightened imaginations of teenagers trapped in a time that no longer exists. LGBT youth are no longer hiding in the shadows fearing torment from bullies while bigoted teachers look the other way. While that narrative lives on the LGBT imagination, it simply no longer reflects reality. The fact children under 13 can identify as asexual or genderfluid at all, with associated identity flags and colors, is evidence of that.

More to the point, teachers and many school administrators have lost sight on their fundamental purpose and their obligation to parents. There was no reason for this teacher to explain that she was pansexual and what that meant for her personally. If the students indeed brought up the subject of their identities, she should have been professional enough to divert the conversation to something else. When asked if they could draw pride flags, she should have had the awareness to recognize the class as a whole and find something more educational and inclusive to focus on.

Instead, she decided it was her personal duty to separate the LGBT students from the rest of the class, make sure they knew she was one of them and then use the class to celebrate a political ideology she felt was morally necessary for those students. Sadly, LGBT organizations agree with her. GLAAD, for example, explicitly encourages teachers to change their language, ask their students for pronouns, provide LGBT resource materials, and openly defend student identities.

The answer to all of this is more transparency for parents and for those parents to be active in their child’s school. There is no justification for keeping school projects, discussions, or curriculum from parents. Parental rights, especially in education, must continue to be a top priority for Republican leaders. The more examples like this that are discovered, the more active we all must become in ensuring children are learning appropriately in school rather than being indoctrinated by leftwing ideologies.