Kentucky's 2022 Teacher of the Year quits profession, citing homophobia
Willie Carver Jr. alleged that school administrators repeatedly tried to stifle LGBTQ identities at his former high school in Montgomery.
www.nbcnews.com
After being openly gay for several years, Willie Carter Jr. never thought about going back into the closet once he started teaching. But during his first week as a high school English teacher in Montgomery, Kentucky, a small town 40 miles east of Lexington, a school administrator had other plans for him.
“He said ‘You will be crucified,’” Carter, 37, recalled. “‘No one will protect you, including me.’”
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The “straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said, was when the school administration failed to address repeated harassment against him and LGBTQ students.
In March, a group of community members started to show up to school board meetings, and repeatedly accused Carter and LGBTQ students of being “groomers,” he said. The word “grooming” has long been associated with mischaracterizing LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers.
In recent months, conservative lawmakers, television pundits and other public figures have accused opponents of a newly enacted Florida education law — which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — of trying to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children. Advocates have been urging public officials against using the charged rhetoric, warning that it could cause verbal and physical harassment directed at LGBTQ Americans.
Carter said verbal attacks against him continued online, with one member of the group posting images of Carter and LGBTQ students on social media coupled with homophobic comments and slurs. In response, school officials told Carter that they couldn’t respond every time a community was upset with something happening at the school, he said. They didn’t approach the LGBTQ students harassed to address their concerns either, Carter added.
