With weeks earlier than Election Day, opponents of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential marketing campaign renewed a speaking level about her working mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and his previous supervision of a highschool gay-straight alliance. They sought to color his involvement with the group as nefarious.
As Snopes previously reported, Walz certainly served as the school adviser to a Homosexual-Straight Alliance (GSA) membership at Mankato West Excessive Faculty in Minnesota when it was based in 1999. Rumors about his participation in the group surfaced quickly after Harris tapped him as her vice presidential candidate in August 2024. That month, as an illustration, the managing editor of the Christian satire web site The Babylon Bee, Joel Berry, referenced Walz’s faculty-adviser expertise in a claim on X, writing “Tim Walz recruited younger boys right into a homosexual membership at faculty.”
By way of X, Snopes requested Berry whether or not he was making a satirical level of some form by describing Walz’s involvement with a membership devoted to bringing straight and homosexual college students collectively to combat homophobia in that manner. He stated he was not.
“Some would possibly argue my characterization of Tim Walz’s involvement in a GSA was crass, nevertheless it is not unfaithful,“ Berry responded. “One of many job descriptions of a GSA chief is recruitment of youngsters into the membership.“ To make this level, Berry supplied Snopes with, amongst different issues, cument and video for GSA advisers with ideas for rising turnout together with “present meals at your assembly“ and “it is essential to provide individuals one thing to look ahead to at each assembly.“
Snopes requested whether or not Berry was implying that Walz used the membership to groom boys for sexual abuse or that Walz himself was a sexual predator. “I am not accusing Walz of being a sexual predator,“ he stated, “however I’m accusing him of propping up a system that allows and encourages the predation of youngsters.”
Given the heated rhetoric, this piece takes a better take a look at what Walz really did throughout his time as a school adviser to a small-town excessive faculty’s GSA.
A Homosexual Membership?
The Mankato West Excessive Faculty Homosexual-Straight Alliance fashioned because of the efforts of 1 pupil, Jacob Reitan, who had been bullied for the notion that he was homosexual. Regardless of vital abuse, he wished to return out as such earlier than going to varsity, and requested the varsity if he may create a Homosexual-Straight Alliance, as reported by the New York Occasions in August 2024:
Taunts and threats escalated as rumors about Jacob Reitan’s sexual orientation swirled round his southern Minnesota highschool throughout his senior 12 months in 1999.
Somebody chalked a slur on his driveway in large letters. His mom recalled being horrified by nameless mail that arrived at their house, together with one message that stated her homosexual son can be higher off useless.
After {the teenager} discovered his automobile window smashed within the faculty car parking zone, he instructed officers at Mankato West Excessive Faculty that he meant to return out of the closet and sought their assist to start out a gay-straight alliance membership.
Homosexual-Straight Alliances have been round since not less than the Eighties, and their specific intention has at all times been to cut back homophobia by dialogue between homosexual and straight people. They don’t seem to be “homosexual golf equipment,“ as the specific level of those golf equipment can be incomplete with out straight allies.
Extra just lately, such golf equipment — that are additionally more and more described as Gender and Sexuality Alliances — have been cited by anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ+ activists as a part of a broad conspiracy to use youngsters. Berry repeated these arguments in a dialogue with Snopes:
Good Leftists do not consider themselves as people however as cogs in a system designed for a goal. On this case, the system is designed to interrupt down innocence and sever the bonds of household to make youngsters extra exploitable. They’re working to create a tradition wherein the exploitation of youngsters is not simply normalized, however celebrated as an ethical good.
Although its conferences drew few college students, the GSA Walz suggested in 1999 reportedly improved Reitan’s life and largely ended the bullying he skilled as a excessive schooler. “Membership conferences drew a smattering of scholars,“ the Occasions reported. “Nobody else got here out of the closet in the course of the interval Mr. Reitan led it, he stated. However the bullying largely ceased.“
Recruited?
Not solely is the notion of “homosexual recruitment“ a well known homophobic canine whistle, however the declare that Walz particularly recruited “younger boys“ is misleadingly slim. The membership didn’t intention to recruit male college students solely, however college students of any gender and sexual orientation. Additional, he didn’t conceive of the GSA or search out its management. He was requested by the principal of the varsity to oversee it. He described each facets of the GSA’s formation in an ad that ran throughout his 2018 marketing campaign for governor of Minnesota:
I had college students come to me who had been involved that there was an uptick in some bullying in direction of our homosexual and lesbian college students, and that is within the mid-’90s. They requested if I might be eager about serving to begin a Homosexual-Straight Alliance group. My reply
I acknowledged my accountability, in that you’ve got an older, white, straight married male soccer coach who’s deeply involved that these college students are handled pretty and that there isn’t any bullying.
And the concept my [football] gamers can be eager about coming to that [group] and study and to talk, to create a tradition in a college that was welcoming, open, and understanding was one thing Gwen [Walz, also a teacher at Mankato West] and I at all times strove for.
“It actually wanted to be the soccer coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,“ Walz instructed the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2018. “In different phrases,“ the Tribune wrote in a profile of the then-gubernatorial candidate, “he can be an emblem that disparate worlds may coexist peacefully.“
“It was essential to have an individual who was so well-liked on campus, a soccer coach who had served within the army,“ Reitan told the Occasions. “Having Tim Walz because the adviser of the gay-straight alliance made me really feel protected coming to highschool.“ One other pupil from Walz’s time with the GSA recalled to the Occasions the perspective Tim and his spouse, Gwen, took:
“The Walzes had been each like, ‘There shall be nothing however respect,’ and it was identical to laying down the regulation,“ stated Nicole Griensewic, 41, a former classmate of Reitan’s. “It was actually daring.“
In response to critics, Berry posted on X: “In a world the place the reality is suppressed, the reality will seem like a hyperbole.” An important corollary so far could possibly be this: In a world with out context, something can look nefarious.
