Teen targeted by homophobic school board member now running for his job

An upstate New York teen who was singled out by a school board member during debate over a club focusing on LGBTQ+ issues is now running against him.

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Elizabeth Lewis, who will turn 18 in April and graduated from Mohonasen High School in Rotterdam, N.Y., in December, is running in May’s Mohonasen Central School District election against board Vice President Chad McFarland, the Albany Times Union reports.

Two years ago, when the board was discussing a GSA club (Genders and Sexualities Alliance, formerly Gay-Straight Alliance), McFarland said, “If some students came and said we want to have a club, a NAMBLA-understanding club” [referring to an organization that promotes pedophilia]. If we had an intersex student pole dancing instruction club, we wouldn’t allow that, right? There is some subject matter that is inappropriate for the kids. The adults can say, ‘Maybe we should look at this a little more.’”

He later denied that he was equating GSAs with NAMBLA and refused to apologize for the comment. “I didn’t compare the two,” he said at another board meeting. “Because I know in my heart of hearts I didn’t make that comparison, I didn’t feel compelled that I needed somehow to sacrifice my integrity to apologize for something I didn’t do.”

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In defending his remarks, he mentioned Lewis by name several times, “explaining the matter to her as though she had been the only one complaining or was the leader of those who criticized him,” the Times Union reports.

Her parents filed a complaint with the school district, saying McFarland had contributed to her anxiety, and she already had been bullied for her LGBTQ+ advocacy. It ended up with New York Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa, who found that McFarland’s statements “were unnecessarily inflammatory,” adding that it was not OK to use “a pretext of inappropriateness or obscenity to disparage” LGBTQ+ people.

Lewis, who is in college and working at a hospital now, said she is running for the school board seat partly because of what McFarland said, but she has other motivations as well. “The school climate, it’s very tense,” she told the paper. “It’s to a level that makes people feel afraid. Marginalized communities can really feel it within the school.”

Good teachers are leaving the district, and student scores on standardized tests are suffering, she said. No teacher has stepped up to sponsor a GSA, and therefore the school doesn’t have one, she noted. “Teachers and faculty are too nervous about the climate in the school to stand up and be a sponsor,” Lewis said. “I believe we’re the only — or one of the only — districts in the Capital Region where the high school doesn’t have a GSA.”

One teacher was harassed for displaying a Pride flag, and the climate needs to be improved, she added. “The school board is a very important part of the school community,” she said. “If the school board is supportive, people will know they’re backed up. Respect is just really important.”