One of the things that really has sickened me the past few years, given all the

agitation from the right about things pertaining to public schools and public

school teachers is how they've weaponized the really beautiful and wonderful situation where there's a special teacher that a

young person feels is trustworthy enough that they can tell that they're struggling with their sexuality or gender or are confused or gay or a trans

Whatever it is I mean it's almost a funny cliche

How many people like me gay guys first told their female high school

English teacher who was their favorite right one of the first people I ever

talked to about it was my high school English teacher It really is demonizing this safety net, this like place of

potential help and care which is different from what you can get from the family but

it is extremely kind and necessary

for a lot of kids in their development

to have somebody that they can trust,

to tell something, that they don't necessarily want

their parents to know, and that it wouldn't necessarily

make them safer if their parents did know it.

And I think that in every way this conversation about teachers and gender and sexual non-conformity

plays out on the right, it is demonizing the very thing that didn't used to exist for kids, which was

like a sympathetic ear, somebody who would understand where they were coming from.

So I do think that the effect of this rhetoric is truly toxic to creating, you

know, more safety for kids, especially in environments where their community or their

school or their church or whatever would

react very negatively to them sharing some doubt that they have about their

...