On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it seems particularly ironic to read on the front page of this paper about the demands of a few to deny the value and reality of our LGBTQ+ community members.

One parent quoted in the article asserted that children should be taught resiliency rather than pursuing a “fight for justice.” Let’s break that down — your child should be taught the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties in order to deal with injustice, rather than relying on the adults in the room to stop denying reality and do something about injustice. This rhetoric is not original and has been brought to our community, and many others, by a national, ultra-conservative movement that has made it their mission to take over school boards and assert their extreme values over communities like ours. 

The people showing up at our school board meetings and calling for your children to be more “resilient” in the face of the meanest and lowest behavior that humans dish out are also the ones who are trying to win your vote this November when four seats open. This is a campaign stunt of the lowest kind fueled by fear and intended to harm the people in our community who are seen by these few as unacceptably different. 

Yet, the most important thing right now is for our community to have the courage to speak up, show up, and support our LGBTQ+ community members. LGBTQ+ community members, you are seen, loved, valued, and not alone. You don’t need to be tougher and more resilient because our community will be tougher and will fight the good fight. 

If you don’t believe this is your fight, then consider the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”