The GSA political network
The Gender and Sexuality Alliance is part of a nation-wide left-wing political network promoting its agenda to students and teachers
The Sheboygan Falls High School Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) is part of a network (or “alliance” to use the club’s terminology) of organizations that promote radical gender ideology and strive for political gain. The network operates at the school, county, state, and national levels, with the upper levels focusing on forming school clubs that can refer students to their websites, social media, and other messaging.
Sheboygan Falls High School GSA
The high school Gender and Sexuality Alliance is a district-sponsored high school club led by teachers paid by the school. It meets during school on Fridays at 9:34 am and instructs students about gender and sexuality according to leftist gender ideology.
These two posts examine activism and ideology in the high school club:
Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance
At the September 16 high school GSA meeting, one of the teachers advising the club wore a blue shirt with large white lettering that read “Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance”. Reciprocally, on its website the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance lists the Sheboygan Falls High School GSA as one of four county GSAs.1
The Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance lists three priorities on its website, the second of which is political in its call to increase “leadership of LGBTQ+ people in local government”. Beyond elections, alliance activism includes issues such as support for Black Lives Matter.2 Its tactics include stereotyping large groups of people. After a school board meeting at one of its ally’s schools, it said of its political opponents, “The majority of the standing-room-only crowd was made up of people who were mobilized by fear and anti-LGBTQ/anti-science/misogynist beliefs”.3
GSAFE (state level)
On its Local Resources page, the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance links up to the Madison-based organization GSAFE. Formerly called Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools, GSAFE “connects with more than 200 GSAs around the state.” It works closely with the DPI and is their “go-to organization for issues of school safety for LGBT students”.4 Sheboygan Falls Middle School lists GSAFE on the school counselor’s LGBTQ+ Resources page.
According to the DPI, GSAFE’s mission is to “create just schools for LGBTQ+ youth in Wisconsin” through various means including “Supporting Gender and Sexuality Alliances” and “Deepening racial, gender, trans and social justice.”5 The DPI lists as a resource GSAFE’s “10 Steps for Starting a Gay-Straight Alliance”.6 (Last year, our school’s GSA called itself the Gay-Straight Alliance.)
Like the county-level ally, GSAFE engages in political activism. When the Rice Lake Area School District recently proposed a policy to require parental notice and consent for students to change their name or pronouns, they posted that it would violate teachers’ professional code of ethics. Also like the county-level ally, they resorted to an ad hominem attack, accusing those proposing the policy of acting in bad faith.7
Surveying students about preferred pronouns and parent notification
The DPI pays GSAFE to train teachers in schools throughout the state.8 On February 12, 2020, GSAFE provided training to Sheboygan Falls teachers “focused on how to provide a safe, inclusive environment for all students.” The training gave as an example surveying students about what pronouns they want the teacher to use. It indicated that teachers needed to address students by their chosen pronouns, parents should not be notified if a student wants to be the opposite sex, and students should choose which sex locker room to use.
This semester, multiple teachers in the district issued surveys to students asking their preferred pronouns. One survey also asked the student whether the teacher should conceal from parents the student's preferred name or pronouns. No parental notice of the surveys was provided.
Policy 2416 and 20 U.S. Code § 1232h require parental notice of any surveys which may reveal political beliefs. A student’s choice of pronouns may reveal this information. According to the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, “pronouns carry a message” about one’s beliefs, for example on the political question of whether “people can have a gender identity inconsistent with their sex at birth.”9 The policy and code also require notice for surveys that may reveal “sex behavior or attitudes”. Pronoun choice may reveal information about a student’s attitude regarding perceived sex or gender identity, especially as it relates to social transition. According to the American Psychological Association, adopting names and pronouns to match gender identity is part of a treatment plan to come after a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.10
Aside from the policy issue, GSAFE's training example to not notify parents is unsound medical advice. According to the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty, “Every major professional association recommends a thorough professional evaluation to assess, among other things, the underlying causes of the child’s or adolescent’s feelings and consider whether a transition will be beneficial. The American Psychological Association, for example, recommends a ‘comprehensive evaluation’ and consultation with the parents and youth to discuss, among other things, ‘the advantages and disadvantages of social transition during childhood and adolescence.’”
Recommendations from the Endocrine Society and WPATH are similar. The problem is that “parents cannot obtain a professional evaluation, screen for dysphoria and other coexisting issues, or provide professional mental-health support for their children, if their school hides from them what is happening at school.” Concealing information about gender identity “takes this life-altering decision out of parents’ hands and places it with educators and young children, who lack the ‘maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions.’”11
After I reported the situation to the district administration, they took steps so that teachers no longer survey students about whether to conceal gender identity from parents. The district should adopt formal policy based off the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty’s model policy to ensure parents always have the right to decide what’s best for their kids.
GSA Network (national level)
GSAFE is a “local partner” of the National Association of GSA Networks, or GSA Network for short.12 GSAFE was part of the GSA Network committee that wrote a handbook for GSA advisors, which GSAFE and GSA Network both publish on their websites.13 The DPI lists as a resource the GSA Network publication “Beyond the Binary: A Tool Kit for Gender Identity Activism in Schools”.14 Sheboygan Falls Middle School lists the GSA Network on the school counselor’s LGBTQ+ Resources page.
GSA Network is politically active. The “Beyond the Binary” publication advises students on activist techniques: “It is important that your allies know the issue and can speak about it. Make sure you have written materials to give to everyone, including talking points.”15 What political views do they promote? Christopher Rufo provides this overview in City Journal:16
Radical gender theory has made sudden inroads in America’s schools. Many parents have watched in confusion as their children repeat the movement’s slogans and adopt synthetic sexual identities such as “non-binary,” “pansexual,” and “genderqueer.” The next question for many families is: Where does this surge in left-wing sexual ideology come from? One answer: from a network of professional activists, who have smuggled university-style gender theory into more than 4,000 schools under the cover of “gender and sexuality” clubs, or GSAs.
The main national organization behind this campaign, the GSA Network, is a professionally staffed nonprofit with a multimillion-dollar annual budget. GSA Network serves as an umbrella organization for more than 4,000 “gender and sexuality alliances” across 40 states. Once called the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the group rebranded in 2016, reflecting a new focus on “the limits of a binary gender system.” The individual chapters, which operate in elementary, middle, and high schools, often use the language of “LGBTQ inclusion” and “anti-bullying” in their public relations, but behind the scenes, the central organization is driven by pure left-wing radicalism that extends far beyond sexuality.
According to the organization’s publicly accessible materials and administrative documents, the GSA Network’s ideology follows the basic framework of radical gender theory: white European men created an oppressive system based on capitalism, white supremacy, and “heteronormativity”—that is, the promotion of heterosexuality, the male-female binary, and bourgeois family norms. In order to fight back, racial and sexual minorities must unite under the banner of “intersectionality” and dismantle the interlocking “systems of oppression.”
The GSA Network isn’t subtle about its political objectives. In a manifesto, the organization calls for the “abolition of the police,” the “abolition of borders and ICE,” the payment of “reparations” to minorities, the “decolonization” of native lands, the end of “global white supremacy,” and the overthrow of the “cisgender heterosexual patriarchy.” The organization is also explicitly anti-capitalist: its literature is littered with references to “anti-capitalism” and, during one board meeting, its leaders fantasized about what life would be like “after capitalism falls.”
Next, children are encouraged to atone for their privileges and perform acts of penance. “Doing the self and collective work to analyze how we contribute to the oppression of Trans, Queer, Non-binary / Gender Non-Conforming, Black, Indigenous, youth of color is tough, but we must commit to dismantling these systems for collective liberation,” the organization says. Specifically, the adults leading the clubs are instructed to tell the “privileged” children that they must “implement the use of pronouns,” “offer a land acknowledgment,” “listen to the Trans community,” “center conversations around Black liberation,” and “use your privilege (and your physical and monetary resources) to support Trans, Queer, Non-binary / Gender Non-Conforming, Black, Indigenous people of color, issues, businesses, and projects.”
All this activity, the group believes, is best kept secret from parents.…
District policy on promotion of external interests
Policy 9700 requires superintendent approval before a teacher promotes the interests of a non-school-related organization. The approval process is a good opportunity to assess how to accomplish goals like upholding the dignity of every person, without school teachers or clubs becoming avenues of indoctrination by large political organizations. Keeping our schools out of politics will people help students of all viewpoints feel safer and more welcomed in the school environment.
Related posts
This post was updated to add that the district has since make changes so that teachers no longer survey students about whether to conceal gender identity from parents.
Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance website. Local Resources, Education/Schools.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) website. GSAFE and Fair Wisconsin LGBT Equality Map.
DPI website. GSAFE and Fair Wisconsin LGBT Equality Map.
Klar J. Teen girls forced to disrobe in front of males lose their free speech rights. American Thinker. October 23, 2022.
American Psychiatric Association website. What is Gender Dysphoria? August 2022.
Wisconsin Institute For Law & Liberty. Amicus Brief of Dr. Erica E. Anderson, PhD to the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, John And Jane v. Montgomery County Board Of Education, Case No. 8-20-cv-3552-PWG. At p. 10-12, 14, 21. Citations omitted.
GSAFE website. Creating & Sustaining a Gay-Straight Alliance.
GSA Network website. Advisor Handbook.
Rufo, C. Soldiers for the Gender Revolution, City Journal. August 10, 2022. Also on Christopher Rufo’s Substack, which includes source documents.