Students walk out of school in support of teacher put on leave for coming out

PROTECT LGBTQ WORKERS RALLY in front of the United States Supreme Court, Washington DC on Tuesday morning, 8 October 2019
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Around 100 students at Winterset High School in Iowa walked out yesterday after a teacher was placed on leave for answering truthfully when a student asked if he is bisexual.

“We’re hoping that this will help Mr. Kaufmann,” Cora Smith, one of the students, said.

Related: Parents scared protecting LGBTQ students from bullying will turn their kids gay

At the beginning of the school year, literature teacher Lucas Kaufmann shared a PowerPoint presentation with students so they could get to know him better. In a slide entitled “Things that describe me,” he included a rainbow flag. A student asked him why he included a rainbow flag and he said that he’s bisexual.

This made some parents angry. Even though straight teachers tell their students all the time about their sexual orientation – like when they talk about opposite-sex partners, their children, or many other details from their lives – many parents don’t like it when LGBTQ teachers do the same.

Jacob Hall, who runs the local anti-LGBTQ website Iowa Standard, wrote a blog post attacking Kaufmann for coming out as bisexual. Hall posted what he claimed was the offending PowerPoint slide, saying that an unspecified number of parents said it “wasn’t appropriate for the classroom setting.”

Hall also said that he talked to Winterset Superintendent Justin Gross, who said that the district will “always welcome and appreciate the feedback of parents.”

Shortly after, Kaufmann was placed on leave.

When the Des Moines Register – a mainstream publication in the state – tried to talk to Superintendent Gross, he was less forthcoming. He said that Kaufmann was put on leave because of…

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