2,000 public school students taken to traumatizing church event instead of promised college fair

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/30/2126162/-2-000-public-school-students-brought-to-traumatizing-church-event-instead-of-promised-college-fair

2,000 public school students taken to traumatizing church event instead of promised college fair
Marissa Higgins
Daily Kos Staff
Friday September 30, 2022 · 11:52 AM EDT
Share this article


Though Republicans love to accuse LGBTQ+ folks and allies of “grooming” young people into being queer, the reality is that our society is so deeply ingrained in a cisgender, heterosexual world that most people don’t even consider aspects of life to be norms—they just see it as normal. Parents push cishet ideals onto kids—and even babies, if you think about gender reveal parties, for example—and thanks to a recent movement from far-right conservatives, want to make it even harder for young people to safely be “out” at school. It’s a mess.

In a truly dystopian turn along these lines, high schoolers from the East Baton Rouge School District in Louisiana signed up for a school-sanctioned college and career fair… only to be sent to a church, where they were subjected to transphobic and misogynistic rhetoric. According to The Advocate, students—who attend public schools, mind you—asked their parents to sign permission slips that allowed them to miss class in order to attend a career fair. Instead, they were subjected to hyper-conservative lectures and sermons at the Living Faith Christian Center as part of the church’s Day of Hope event.

You. might be thinking: Okay, that’s terrible, but how many kids could it have been? Fifty? One hundred? Friends: It was thousands.

Students were bussed to the event under the impression they’d get some free food and insight into life after high school. Instead, according to biology teacher Brittney Bryant, who attended the event, students were separated by their sex assigned at birth, and her only trans student was told they couldn’t go with the other boys.

Bryant wrote in a Facebook post that while boys did push-ups and games in one area (which Bryant says was actually outside and in “extreme heat”), girls listened to speakers encourage them to forgive their rapists. Bryant said some students were so upset, they ended up crying in the bathroom. Bryant alleges some students poured water over the heads of trans students without repercussions.

“God forbid I mention anything about sexual orientation, religion, or political agendas in my classroom,” she wrote in part on Facebook, adding if she did so, she’d be put on leave from her job.

Bryant also alleged in her Facebook post that students were incentivized to fill out voter registration forms in order to get free pizza.

“I learned that the children were told in order to receive a “meal ticket” they were told to complete a voter registration,” she wrote in part. “When I went to confront the unethical situation running councilman Darryl Hurst was the one handing out voter registration to the long line of students hoping to get fed pizza at the end of the event. Later was told the pizza was provided by another non profit and it was an “incentive”.” She went on to call this “propaganda” and said some students were actually under 18 years old.

One student who attended the event, Alexis Budyach, said an adult read a Bible verse on stage at the beginning of the event. This is inappropriate for a number of obvious reasons, but it’s especially important to note as it directly contradicts what the school district has said. The East Baton Rouge school district insists this wasn’t a religious event, and that any prayer was initiated by students and not planned ahead of time.

Lawyers are reportedly poised to bring a lawsuit over possible civil rights violations and emotional distress, as covered in this local news story from WBRZ.

Parent Bonnie Kersch, whose daughter attended the event, told the outlet her daughter didn’t realize it was going to be so religious. Kersch said her daughter felt she was “duped” into thinking it was a college and career fair, only to be “proselytized over and prayed over."

According to The Advocate, the Day of Hope event was in partnership with the school district and included more than $9,000 from the school district to cover busses for the 2,000 students and to produce the event.

[Baitball Blogger]

1. The best is in the last few paragraphs.

"Lawyers are reportedly poised to bring a lawsuit over possible civil rights violations and emotional distress, as covered in this local news story from WBRZ."

BTW, they always say that prayer was initiated by students. Always.

[vanlassie]

7. And the kids drove the busses.

Heads should roll.

[sprinkleeninow]

40. As a practitioner of my Tradition of Christian faith, this is way sick.

"Lawyers are reportedly poised to bring a lawsuit over possible civil rights violations and emotional distress, as covered in this local news story from WBRZ."

GOOD!!

'They' are warping, deforming, distorting, perverting, bastardizing the Christian Way I know of.

[TigressDem]

2. K&R K& R K&R K&R K& R K&R K&R K& R K&R

[Bayard]

3. Child abuse

Charge them.

[DFW]

60. There is no other way to describe this.

It should be prosecuted as such.

[librechik]

4. There's a movie script in here somewhere...n/t

[jimfields33]

5. The only decent thing with the voter registration

I think it’s good for kids especially seniors to register to vote. Now if they said you could only register Republican if you want pizza. That would not be good but if it’s just straight up registration, I hope it convinces them to vote. And after this experience I would imagine they will vote for Democratic supporters.

[JHB]

10. Maybe, maybe not. Does Louisiana have voters declare a party on voter registrations?

If so, at an event like this, what are the odds ones marked the "wrong" way end up in the trash or shredder?

[WinstonSmith4740]

16. Exactly!

what are the odds ones marked the "wrong" way end up in the trash or shredder?

That was my first thought. Just like the Russian soldiers telling people where to mark their ballots, you know anything marked with any party affiliation besides "Republican" will never make it to the voter registrar.

[Mr.Bill]

37. That would be a violation of the law in my state, California.

It would also be a violation to knowingly try to get someone under age to register to vote, unless they will be of age before the next election.

[certainot]

51. yeah. sex on the wrong brain

a great book and story and over-needed explanation of why we got so fucked up

[redstatebluegirl]

6. K&R

[TheBlackAdder]

8. As with those flown to Martha's Vineyard, taking someone someplace on false pretense is kidnapping.

[badhair77]

9. This is appalling on so many levels.

Investigations must be started and heads must roll. I hope there are videos so they can’t weasel out of it.

[Texin]

11. The parents and the kids should have lawyers draw up and file a Class Action Suit

against the school(s), the leaders and the public school system of that area.

[poli-junkie]

12. The separated girls were told

to forgive their rapists if they were raped?!

Damn — those christofascists are twisted!

🤬

[OMGWTF]

17. THIS! THIS! THIS!

How fked-up is that?

[NullTuples]

43. I believe the word you are looking for is, "groomers"

[wnylib]

52. Despicable. I am surprised that none of the kids

walked out and refused to participate.

[LuckyLib]

54. Exactly. With critical thinking skills, those students would have smelled a rat and said

"Outta here." Parents and students need to raise hell. And the school district? Schools have little money as is, to be spending it on Bible-banging rallies is ridiculous!

[meow2u3]

13. Charge the school officials with kidnapping

The school officials lured the kids on the bus, lying to them about the college and career fair with the intent to bully them, when in fact they tricked them into attending a fundie revival replete with bigotry.

If some or all the student were under 18, the charges should be kidnapping of minors.

I'm sick of RW authority figures getting away with felonies that would send you or me up the river for decades.

[NullTuples]

44. They figured they'd follow Gov DeSantis' lead & even made it about future jobs

[KentuckyWoman]

14. "We didn't know it would be religious" - um... ahem

"District leadership was unaware of any religious aspects of this event."

https://www.2911mentor.com/

Academy 29:11 Mission statement
We believe by being Inspirational, Intentional and Intimate we're able to redirect our students to Jesus Christ
who defines their future and to change the world.

ON the front page of the website.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.." Jeremiah 29:11

[GPV]

35. District either didn't pay attention or they lied. Either way, they

need to be held accountable.

[bluecollar2]

15. Question from a non parent

As a property owner paying school taxes would I have standing to file suit against the school district for deliberate misappropriation of funds?

And would I have legal standing to deposit any school taxes into an escrow account pending the final decision of the court(s)?

[Initech]

18. How is this not grossly illegal? And where is the ACLU on this?

Ugh… I have said it before and I can’t say it enough: Fuck the Christian right. Bunch of soulless ghouls.

[3catwoman3]

19. I have been wondering if the delivery room...

…custom of declaring, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” will ever change.

Not a flippant question, I promise.

[Snackshack]

20. The gawd squad...

Is going to keep doing this kind of 💩 as long as they can get away with it.

A meal was contingent on “voter registration”. There are laws against this. More importantly though is this. Over the last decade the religious right have encroached in to politics at every level and a majority of Americans still believe in the separation of church and state.

Religious entities that do this need to have their tax exempt status removed. I am tried of subsidizing these assholes with my tax dollars and being called unpatriotic or hearing that I should be killed for being a Dem or for respecting another persons rt to live as they want. IT’s bullshit and these people are gonna keep poking the sleeping dog on the porch and hopefully we wake up and bite back…soon.

[louis-t]

29. These are the same people that forbid giving water

to people standing in line in the hot sun for 8 hrs just to vote.

[gulliver]

21. I'd like a cooler (and preferably no pay wall) rendition of what allegedly happened

It does read like there is a lawsuit or three that could be filed. But the dailykos linked article points to an original story on a site called "The Advocate." The first thing that link does is tell me I have one free article I can read, and then it pesters me multiple times (with a popup and in-article links) to sign up for a paid subscription.

[babylonsister]

23. Here...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/25/louisiana-school-college-fair-transphobic-church-event-students-say

Louisiana school turned ‘college fair’ into transphobic church event, students say

[gulliver]

24. The main source is still The Advocate

I'm not sure what that is in terms of a news source. The other two sources appear to be Facebook posts? It does look like something happened, but it's so thinly sourced that I can't determine whether I'm being manipulated by a couple of Facebook friends or there's a there there. This isn't the usual case with your posts, most of which I read regularly.

[babylonsister]

27. Seems legit...

The Advocate is Louisiana's largest daily newspaper. Based in Baton Rouge, it serves the southern portion of the state. Separate editions for New Orleans, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, and for Acadiana, The Acadiana Advocate, are published. It also publishes gambit, about New Orleans food, culture, events, and news, and weekly entertainment magazines: Red in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and Beaucoup in New Orleans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advocate_(Louisiana)

[gulliver]

31. Yes it does

Thanks!

[csziggy]

28. A search takes a second to learn that The Advocate is Louisiana's largest newspaper

Less time than it took to write your complaint about the source.

The Advocate is Louisiana's largest daily newspaper. Based in Baton Rouge, it serves the southern portion of the state. Separate editions for New Orleans, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, and for Acadiana, The Acadiana Advocate, are published. It also publishes gambit, about New Orleans food, culture, events, and news, and weekly entertainment magazines: Red in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and Beaucoup in New Orleans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advocate_(Louisiana)

[gulliver]

30. Correct me if I'm wrong...

...but I did post that the issue is thin sourcing. And I did post that I visited the Advocate site. All of the sourcing in both the Advocate and the two sites that link to it (dailykos and The Guardian) appears to originate in "social media" and Facebook (social media too).

Which is the issue.

How do we know we aren't being manipulated by a small clique of Facebook friends?

I'm satisfied that The Advocate appears legit at this point, but I don't consider this article's sourcing to be up to scratch. So, you're right. That's a complaint. And I think it's legit too.

[csziggy]

32. You just complained about their paywall

This kind of story often starts with local sources - though a state wide publication is not really a local source.

As for the paywall you complained about - I get that from many, many much larger sources as newspapers suffer from lack of funding.

[gulliver]

33. I pay for a lot of paywalls for the very reason you're talking about

I want to support journalism. The complaint in this case was possibly overly suspicious. It wasn't about the paywall so much as the "logrolling" potential of dailykos trying to help build The Advocate's subscriber base by directing traffic to them.

[reACTIONary]

46. When it cited "The Advocate" I assumed ...

... it was the gay oriented magazine by that name.

https://www.advocate.com/

[Solly Mack]

22. Sue, sue, sue-them-all.

[Bluethroughu]

25. Lawsuit should be coming from a parent tax payer in the district.

[llashram]

26. Christo-fascists are really off

sad that some students no doubt believed this fascist shit and will carry the stain for the rest of their lives. BRAVO to those who rejected the RW brainwashing

[I_UndergroundPanther]

34. Ahh the truth comes out

The book bannings the career fair turned church

Got to get them while they're young.

They only want thier own religion in school

Fuck right wing fascist dominionist fundie bullshit.

If I was in that stupid church affair I would have been so triggered I might have punched someone and beat up the bullies pouring water on me for being trans.

I would not go along to get along at any religion forced on me.

[samnsara]

36. were these minors???? Man O man i would have a lawyer by now....

[Mr.Bill]

38. One has to wonder how many of these "fairs" are taking place

around the country. Somebody put a lot of money, time and effort into this. I'm betting it wasn't to just do it once.

[SergeStorms]

39. Tax that church out of existence.

I'm so sick of the christofascist motherfuckers I
could scream. 🤬

[Stuart G]

41. K and R Thanks for Posting

[BlueIdaho]

42. What the actual fuck is wrong with these people?

Call in the Law Squad.

[Ford_Prefect]

45. Transported under false pretenses by school officials sounds a lot like kidnapping

and false imprisonment. I'm surprised none of them called their parents or the police while it was going on. This is begging for FBI and Civil Rights Div. to act.

If parental approval was required then why have no parents complained? If the students were of age why were they lied to about it?

Why would the school district need to lie about the praying if it was a student initiated function? Clearly it was not. The emails, phone traffic, texting and contracts (Oh yes they did!) are going to be very enlightening. Particularly the connections between the group who ran the "event" the kids were delivered to and the school district officials, including the money spent to transport them, are gonna look very odd indeed in court. To say nothing of who let the contract for the site of the event and who initiated the arranging of it...And then there's the question of who ran the event at the site, and how.

If something like this was done where I used to live in North Carolina there would have been all kinds of alarms going off over it. Among other things the various family churches would have had something to say, along with the NAACP and the ACLU. More to the point questions about misleading the students about the content of event, the apparent coercion involving voter registration and segregating them by sex would have been raised during the event.

[MrsCoffee]

59. Parents have complained.

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_97dc38c2-3a0d-11ed-a388-3f7b65892ceb.html

Parents, students complain East Baton Rouge schools field trip was more like church service
'Day of Hope' college and career fair at local church drew 2,100 students

BY CHARLES LUSSIER | STAFF WRITER
PUBLISHED SEP 21, 2022 AT 7:51 PM | UPDATED SEP 22, 2022 AT 2:14 PM

Alexis Budyach’s mother, Bonnie Kersch, said neither she nor her child had any idea the Day of Hope event was occurring at a church.

“She felt she was duped into thinking that she was going for a college and career fair, that she was proselytized over and prayed over,” Kersch said.

The flyer that she received beforehand listed the address for the event, 6375 Winbourne Ave., but did not make clear that that’s the address for Living Faith. If she had known that, she said, she would not have signed the permission form.

“Do I have to Google everything?” wondered Kersch.

In her Facebook post, Budyach, like Bryant, questioned the “girl talk” portion of the event. The third speaker, a mother who recounted finding her son dead after a suicide, hit far too close to home for Budyach, who has a grandfather who years ago killed himself.

[Lucinda]

47. ...

[Scalded Nun]

48. Someone should file kidnapping charges against these evil motherfuckers

[SeattleVet]

49. Kidnapping by inveiglement

Same as what that a-hole DeSantis did with the asylum seekers.

(for kidnapping, the term inveigle means to lure, lead astray, or entice by false representations or other deceitful means; as such, a person who entices another to ride in a car with a false promise to take the person to a certain destination has inveigled the passenger into the car).

False representation as a career/college information event with free food?

This scum (with apologies to the many useful properties of pond scum) that set this teen trap up needs to see how a prison chaplain operates...first hand.

And they have the balls to call US 'groomers'...what is this but christian nationalist/transphobic grooming? It's all about projection to them.

[raising2moredems]

50. I remember getting a permission slip for a school assembly for my kiddo

I did an internet search and found the true objective of the "stars" of the assembly. Sent a nasty note to the school, know full well one of the school staff had a huge right wing bend (but of course taught at the public school since it paid more money than the school associated with his religion). Principal took it seriously, I got to speak to said staff member face-2-face. Kiddo did not attend the assembly. Suffice it to say it was an excellent teaching moment to my kiddo - do your research and call out bad behavior.

So I strongly suggest every parent to research said school events before blindly signing permission slips.

[keithbvadu2]

53. Grooming the girls to forgive rapists.

Grooming the girls to forgive rapists.

Would they recommend the same preemptive 'forgiveness' if the boys were being molested?

[AZ8theist]

55. When I read shit like this...

It only reaffirms my atheism.

..and puts a smile on my face.

If your fucking god actually existed, every human would know....Yet? crickets....

[LittleGirl]

57. Thank you. Exactly! nt

[Jenny von Westphalen]

56. Lawyer up

[BradAllison]

58. Alito will dismiss it automatically

"Get over it, pussies!" as he gives up any sense of being a "jurist".

[SouthernDem4ever]

63. or following the constitution

they seem to have a problem with that.

[twodogsbarking]

61. Life became better after I didn't have to go to school any more.

[SouthernDem4ever]

62. Indoctrination of the young

is the only way to get people to grow up believing in fairy tales.

[Roy Rolling]

64. Who protects the Children?

Out of all those school officials who were aware of this trip, who objected and tried to stop it? Where are the watchdogs to prevent such a thing? These adults totally failed to protect the kids from propaganda masquerading as education.

There’s a word for them: stupid. Yes, stupid. Harsh? Yes. They were supposed to be smarter than kids and failed—they are stupid.

They need to be held accountable the same way the 376 law enforcement officers who responded in Uvalde failed to perform when needed.

[rubbersole]

65. I would love to get the Rude Pundit's take on this...