UPDATE: WATCH FOR THE MARCH 1 ISSUE OF DALLAS VOICE FOR AN IN-DEPTH REPORT ON  THE NON-BINARY SIXTH-GRADE R IN THE  SHERMAN ISD WHO HAS BEEN BULLIED ASSAULTED REPEATEDLY AT SCHOOL AND ON THE BUS.

Not to be outdone by the homophobes in Oklahoma where non-binary 16-year-old Owasso High School student Nex Benedict died Feb. 8 after being beaten by three other students in a school bathroom the day before, the homophobes in Texas are making sure everybody knows they have LGBTQ+ nonbinary kids, too.

Dallas Morning News reported today (Monday, Feb. 26) that Keller ISD school officials have suddenly canceled a planned Keller high school production of The Laramie Project without explaining why.

The play is about what happened in Laramie, Wyo., after gay college student Matthew Shephard was abducted from Laramie, beaten severely and then tied to a fence in a field outside the city and left there to die in October 1998.

DMN notes that parents of students at Timber Creek High School received an email on Friday night, Feb. 23, telling them that students would no longer be performing the critically acclaimed play this spring, but that school officials would find another play for the students to stage.

The email offered no explanation for the decision.

Meanwhile, a little further northeast in Sherman — in the same school district that made national headlines last fall when the superintendent decided to step in and cancel the Sherman High School theater department’s planned production of Oklahoma! because a trans male student had been cast in a male role — a non-binary 6th grader in the Sherman school system, since last September 28, has been repeatedly bullied and physically attacked by an upperclassman and that the harassment and physical attacks were accompanied by anti-LGBTQ insults.

After one such assault, on Dec. 15, the non-binary sixth-grader was reportedly put into in-school suspension or defending themselves. The sixth-graders parents said they were told last September that school officials were “looking into it,” but when they asked for a meeting, they received no response.

The non-binary sixth grader was attacked a third time on Feb. 13 while on the school bus, according to information from Equality Texas. We are waiting on more information right now from Equality Texas and other sources as to where the situation currently stands.

And last but not least, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, responding to a letter sent to the United Nations last month from a host of LGBTQ advocates accusing Abbott and other Texas officials of infringing on the rights of LGBTQ Texans through their homophobic administrative and legislative actions, warned the U.N. to mind its own business.

In a post the social media platform formerly known as Twitter ( i.e. X), Abbott declare, “The UN can go pound sand.”

As The Hill points out, this echoes comments made “in 2021 after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres suggested Texas needs to become less dependent on oil and gas to remain prosperous into 2050.”

The Hill also points out that Texas lawmakers — dominated by Republicans — filed at least 55 bills last year during the legislative session targeting LGBTQ people.

— Tammye Nash