Earlier this month, when news broke that anti-trans speaker Walt Heyer was scheduled to give a talk at Vergennes Union High School, LGBTQ+ advocates expressed dismay at the chosen venue.
Hosting an anti-trans speaker in a public school would tell “queer and trans youth that they are not welcome in public spaces,” Amanda Rohdenburg, associate director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy nonprofit Outright Vermont, told VTDigger on June 16, four days before Heyer’s talk.
Behind the scenes, however, school district officials were receiving a different kind of message about the event: warnings, from the high-profile Christian law firm Liberty Counsel, against canceling it.
