Transcript
Grapevine
Episode 4: A Raging Fire
Weston Brown, 28, sees a video of his homeschooling mother calling for dozens of books on sexuality and gender to be banned from public schools in another Texas school district. To counter her political activism, Weston publicly shares his story of growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian family. Feeling pressured by parents and school officials, Em Ramser removes LGBTQ symbols from her classroom and no longer recognizes the teacher she’s become.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In July 2022, the same summer that Ren asked a judge for permission to leave Texas and cut ties with her mother, a 28-year-old marketing professional named Weston Brown was at his apartment in San Diego, mindlessly scrolling Twitter.
WESTON BROWN: Yeah, I was in my house, um, enjoying, like, an ordinary week. And then, all of a sudden, I see my mom’s face.
MONICA BROWN: The word I have on my heart is repentance. Just to think about that as adults, that not all of us had a hand in what’s happened here, but we are the ones who are present to solve the issues.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: That’s Monica Brown, Weston’s mother, speaking at a May 2022, school board meeting in Granbury, Texas, a town about an hour away from Grapevine. I had tweeted a video of her speech to give an example of how heated the debate over school library books had gotten. And now, Weston was seeing my tweet on his feed. In the clip, Monica was calling on the school board to repent for giving students access to books that she believed could be damaging to their hearts and minds.
MONICA BROWN: Just like this one, and I’m sorry to point fingers, but we have librarians who -- who are misunderstanding what is healthy and good for children. We’re talking about graphic inappropriate material for children as young as age 11.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Monica is a mother of nine who leads a Christian homeschooling cooperative. None of her kids, including Weston, have ever attended public school. But here she was calling for criminal charges against school librarians and suggesting that a local Christian pastor should be put in charge of reviewing what books public school children can read.
MONICA BROWN: And he would never steer you wrong. And he’ll put you in a safety zone with your books. You don’t have to have these ultra controversial books in your library. And literally you have --
ANTONIA HYLTON: A rush of memories came flooding back as Weston watched the video. How his mother had removed pages from science books when he was a child to keep him and his younger siblings from seeing illustrations of male and female anatomy. How she’d always warned that reading the wrong books or watching the wrong movies could open the door to sinful temptation. How she’d cut him off from regular contact with his family nearly five years earlier after he came out as gay.
WESTON BROWN: I had come out to my family just a few years ago and then had been effectively kind of excommunicated from family events and things.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Now, it appeared to Weston that his mother was pushing public schools to adhere to some of the same strict religious ideologies that he says he suffered under as a child. And, based on the applause in the video as she walked away from the lectern, she wasn’t alone.
MONICA BROWN: And that’s all I have to say. (APPLAUSE)
DISTRICT STAFF: Thank you, Ms. Brown.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Disputes between strict religious parents and LGBTQ children have always been a cause of bitter family estrangement. But in our current moment, with Christian activists openly accusing educators of pushing a queer agenda on kids and classrooms, some of these private rifts are beginning to spill out into public view. That’s what happened between Sharla and Ren. And now, it’s what was about to happen with Weston and Monica.
WESTON BROWN: My mom is now trying to control what other families do. And I could imagine other families not being educated, other children not seeing themselves represented, and the kind of harm this would carry on beyond our family. I kind of reached a point where I realized, okay, if this is gonna go out into the world, so will I.
ANTONIA HYLTON: In this episode, we’re going to turn away just for a bit from the fight in Grapevine to tell you about another Texas town consumed in a battle over library books and LGBTQ inclusion, and about another mother and child who found themselves on opposite ends of that conflict.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: We’re sharing this story because it shows how the political movement upending the lives of teachers like Em Ramser has been spreading to lots of other school districts. But, also, because Weston sees his fundamentalist upbringing in North Texas as something of a cautionary tale. With conservative Christians pushing to influence public schools in towns like Granbury and Grapevine, and in Florida in Pennsylvania and Utah, and lots of other places, Weston wants people to know exactly what it looks like when parents and politicians who share his mother’s worldview are allowed to dictate what children can learn.
ANTONIA HYLTON: From his apartment in San Diego, Weston started to type a tweet that day he saw his mother’s school board comments. In a post linking to the video, he wrote --
WESTON BROWN: “This is my mom. Seeing her advocate for the erasure of queer representation is crushing. Coming up on the five year anniversary of being effectively cut off from my family and siblings after coming out in 2018. Much love to those standing up and pushing back for representation.”
ANTONIA HYLTON: He hesitated before posting, knowing he would be reopening old wounds for the world to see. He didn’t want to do anything to hurt the woman who’d raised him. But, he thought, how could he stay quiet while she sought to prosecute school librarians?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Weston added a rainbow flag emoji to the end of his post. Then, he hit send.
ANTONIA HYLTON: From the NBC News team that brought you Southlake, I’m Antonia Hylton.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: I’m Mike Hixenbaugh.
ANTONIA HYLTON: And this is Grapevine.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Episode 4. A Raging Fire.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Weston grew up in the suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth, just a few miles from Grapevine. His family made the move out to the more rural town of Granbury after he left home.
WESTON BROWN: You know, the immediate memories that come to mind are a lot of positive ones. I remember traveling. I remember the -- we, um, rented homes growing up and I remember the fun of packing and moving.
ANTONIA HYLTON: But it wasn’t long before Weston realized his family was different from others in the subdivision.
WESTON BROWN: I was, uh, homeschooled exclusively. And so all the information that I was raised on was what my parents deemed appropriate.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Although the Brown family’s bookshelves were lined with classics like “The Chronicles of Narnia,” many popular titles were forbidden. That included the Harry Potter series, which his mother, like many other conservative Christians, regarded as a satanic depiction of witchcraft.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Weston’s parents declined to talk to us or answer written questions, but his account of his family’s beliefs and his education is supported by Monica’s social media posts, her public comments, and private messages Weston shared with us.
WESTON BROWN: My parents made it clear that they were protecting me, and I thought, this is helpful and this is, you know, keeping me -- me safe when so many other kids are -- you know, their parents don’t care about them as much as my parents care about me.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Now, he sees things differently.
WESTON BROWN: They were using the word protect, but the action was control.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Some of Weston’s homeschool lessons were produced and influenced by the Institute in Basic Life Principles, or IBLP, a Christian homeschooling organization that was popularized by the Duggar family on the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting.” Its founder promoted strict enforcement of traditional gender roles and total submission to male authority.
WESTON BROWN: So all of the education, all the religious material was -- was very curated to make sure that I followed a certain path. Gender roles were very strictly enforced. The way that you could express yourself, or be, was very narrow.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The IBLP curriculum Weston learned from, called “Wisdom Booklets,” relied on Jesus’s message from the Sermon on the Mount as “the primary source” for every subject. The goal, according to the publisher, was to encourage children to quote, “view every aspect of life from a Biblical perspective.” That included US history.
WESTON BROWN: That has always been really strong in my family, the -- the Christian view, the mindset that, you know, this is a God-ordained nation. That included a lot of whitewashing of history, that slavery was a necessary evil. I learned that, you know, things like the -- the Civil War was just about states’ rights. And, um, this led to severe lacks in education. Fast forward, I was, you know, 23 years old Googling, like, top 10 events in -- in US history. I had no knowledge of, um, MLK or the Tulsa Race Massacre, or, uh, any of these things.
ANTONIA HYLTON: One historian in particular had an outsized influence on Weston’s understanding of the world: a self-taught scholar and evangelical activist from North Texas named David Barton.
WESTON BROWN: He would retell American history in ways that appealed to what we already wanted to hear.
ANTONIA HYLTON: For more than three decades, Barton had traveled the country, speaking at churches and in front of legislatures and on Christian television programs with a signature rapid fire delivery.
DAVID BARTON: So that’s why Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution requires that every state maintain a Republican form of government. We’re not a democracy. That is one of the seven forms of government. Bible rejects that as being a really lousy form --
ANTONIA HYLTON: In Barton’s rendering, America was founded not as the world’s first secular democracy, but as an explicitly Christian nation.
DAVID BARTON: And that’s what’s made America so different, is all these unique things we found in the Bible that we applied.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The modern conception of separation of church and state was a lie cooked up by progressives based on a misreading of Thomas Jefferson.
DAVID BARTON: That’s where we get the phrase “separation of church and state.” It is always saying, “government, get your hands off religion, leave it alone.” It’s not saying, “church, stay away from government.”
ANTONIA HYLTON: And any laws in court rulings limiting the influence of religion in schools and government were an affront to America and an affront to God.
DAVID BARTON: So Benjamin Rush, a founding father I mentioned earlier, said the first purpose of public schools is to teach students to love and serve God. He said the second purpose of public schools is to teach students to love and serve their country. And the third purpose of public schools is to teach students to love and serve their family.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Barton’s books were a fixture on the Brown family shelves, Weston says.
WESTON BROWN: It was very much so we are a Christian nation. I remember the Bible verse. It was like, um, “if my people who are called by my name will call on me, I will heal their land.” It was kind of like, we can get -- we can make America great again through going back to God.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Barton, who did not respond to interview requests, has also expressed deep disdain for gay and transgender people, at one point claiming that the so-called “homosexual agenda” was fueled by the same demonic forces that led to the Holocaust. Barton’s teachings are disputed by many historians but embraced by pastors like Rafael Cruz and groups like Patriot Mobile Action. According to some scholars of the religious right, Barton’s pseudo-history provides the philosophical foundation for the Christian right’s campaign to force Jesus into the center of American life. And Barton has promoted the Seven Mountains Mandate as a way to achieve that goal. In time, he would be bringing those ideas directly to school leaders in Grapevine. As a homeschooler, Weston bought into the version of history his parents presented, but from a young age, he sensed that who he was didn’t fit their plans for his life.
WESTON BROWN: I remember going to church and the -- the first noticing of looking at some of the -- the boys in the group differently and feeling, um, at the time I thought, I just wanna be like them. I -- I wanna be cool like that. I wanna dress like that and making note. But I was just ex -- simply a child experiencing a crush and had no language for that. And so I noticed that and I knew it was wrong. So it was immediately something to be ashamed of. Um, I, um, was probably 18 when I started to realize: this is more than just, um, a curiosity or -- or a passing moment.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: A couple years after finishing his homeschool education, Weston, the oldest of his siblings, got his own apartment in Dallas. In the years that followed, he lived a double life. Privately, he was exploring his sexuality and growing comfortable with his true identity. Publicly, he continued on the path his parents had laid out for him. He went on mission trips and got a job in human resources at Gateway Church in Southlake, the megachurch that Ren attended with Sharla. But he ended up getting fired in 2017 at age 23 after getting caught Googling information about homosexuality on the church’s Wi-Fi. It was soon after that that he decided he was tired of hiding.
WESTON BROWN: I don’t think I’ll ever make my family happy. Unless I fully just let them map out my life, I will never live up to it. I realized that I wanted to be honest with them and realized that I was being crushed by the weight of two lives. I wrote them a single-page letter, and the sum of it essentially was, for all my faults and shortcomings, being gay isn’t one of them.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Weston ended the note, “I pray that you receive this with an open mind.”
ANTONIA HYLTON: That prayer, he says, went unanswered. Over the next year-and-a-half, Weston says his parents tried to convince him that he was mistaken. Through a series of emotional lunch meetings, phone calls, and text messages, he says they urged him to see a Christian counselor in the hopes that he could learn to overcome his homosexual identity. They invited him to church, the one place where they would allow him to see his younger siblings. For months, Monica sent him links to articles from Christian news sites with headlines like, “evidence shows sexual orientation can change,” and “It’s not gay to straight, it’s lost to saved.” Links that she was simultaneously posting on Facebook.
WESTON BROWN: And then the conversations that we had began to become very circular. And so we just kind of tried to argue the same points. I would show up with a list of podcasts or, um, books that might be helpful for them.
ANTONIA HYLTON: After Weston made clear that there was no prayer or summer camp that could change who he is, he says his mother made clear that he was not welcome inside their home, at one point texting him, quote, “you are not invited to our house for Thanksgiving or any other meal.”
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And much like Sharla had after finding a copy of “The Prince and the Dressmaker” in Ren’s backpack, Monica wondered about what corrupting influences might have led Weston astray, at one point texting Weston she was praying against evil spirits that she thinks might have entered him as a child after he’d seen “It,” the Stephen King miniseries about a demonic clown.
WESTON BROWN: After I came out, as she was looking for reasons -- how could this have happened, where did we go wrong -- that was one of the examples that came to mind.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Weston believes that same fear is what’s driving the broader Christian campaign to restrict what other people’s kids can read.
WESTON BROWN: I mean, their mindset is if we can control the books in the school library, you will not be gay. I mean, that’s where they’re at. And the person who pays the price for that is the student, is the child, who just needs a safe space to be loved and to grow up and be supported.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In the months after Weston called out his mother’s school board activism online, she didn’t stop. If anything, she was becoming more vocal. And that worried him. His parents had always taught him to fight for his beliefs. Now he was going to follow their lead.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Granbury, an old Texas rail town, sits along the banks of the Brazos River. Named for the Confederate General Hiram B. Granbury, it’s the largest city in a mostly rural county, where 80 percent of residents voted for Donald Trump in 2020. And it’s growing fast. Monica and her family moved to Granbury in 2020, she said at a recent school board meeting, because she’d heard that it was conservative and family friendly.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: A year after arriving in town, some of Monica’s homeschool children were participating in a robotics tournament hosted at Granbury Middle School. That’s where, Monica wrote later on social media, she saw books in the school library that she says contained inappropriate sexual themes. Her discovery was coming just as the nationwide backlash over school library books was heating up. And Monica wasn’t the only Granbury resident reaching out to the district with concerns. Soon, those complaints reached Granbury superintendent Jeremy Glenn. In early 2022, Glenn called a meeting with school librarians to relay what he’d been hearing.
JEREMY GLENN: So, funny story, yes, uh, I -- I have -- uh, I’ve been getting some emails from -- uh, and -- and just -- just concerns, uh, from, uh, parents. And they’re going to trustees.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: We’ve been hearing from teachers all across the country who say their school administrators have been pressuring them to censor their lesson plans and bookshelves. Those conversations are almost always in private, behind closed doors. In this case, someone secretly hit record on their phone and later shared the audio with us. Glenn tells the librarians he shares parents’ concerns about some of the books in Granbury High’s library. One was a sex ed guide written for LGBTQ teens called “This Book Is Gay.”
JEREMY GLENN: That book does not need to be on our shelves. I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries. And I’m gonna take it a step further with you. You can disagree if you want. There are two genders. There’s male and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they are women, and there are women that think they are men. And I -- I don’t have any issues with what people wanna believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In a written statement months later, Glenn told us Granbury ISD was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds. He said the district’s primary focus is educating students, adding, quote, “The values of our community will always be reflected in our schools.”
ANTONIA HYLTON: In the days after Glenn’s meeting, district employees pulled more than 130 books off school library shelves and announced the formation of a volunteer committee to review them. Monica was one of the first residents appointed. But from the start, the homeschooling mom felt the process was a sham. The first two meetings were held at times when she couldn’t attend, she said. And by the time she arrived at the third meeting, the committee had already voted to return most of the books. She told the story to “The Blue Shark Show,” a local podcast.
MONICA BROWN: And I watched significant people in the GISD staff, people who had won awards, teachers of the year award, a principal, a librarian, just smile and go ahead and vote to put explicit content back into the library. And that’s when I went, oh, okay, they know it’s explicit and they’re putting it back anyway.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Monica said she was outraged. If she didn’t speak up to protect the children of Granbury, who would?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: That spring, in May 2022, she ratcheted up her efforts. Monica and another Granbury parent filed a police report alleging that the school district was making pornography available to minors. The report summary didn’t mention specific books, but most of the titles Monica and her supporters flagged to school officials were novels written for teens that included descriptions of sex or featured LGBTQ characters. None of it was pornography, according to legal experts we talked to. But a deputy constable opened an investigation anyway that was still pending more than a year later. Just having the investigation opened was seen as a victory for parent activists because it sent an unambiguous signal to school librarians. They needed to be very careful about what books they kept on shelves. But Monica’s fight to protect public school children was just getting started.
MONICA BROWN: I have read a ton of pages of books, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, because I took it seriously when I realized what people were doing.
ANTONIA HYLTON: She started attending board meetings at the Granbury School District Admin Building and citing out-of-context passages from young adult romance books and fantasy novels.
MONICA BROWN: -- is a beastiality book. And it’s about a wing-like creature that has, um, sex with some girl. And it’s violent, it’s rough, and I don’t know why it’s in our schools.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Even after she became aware that Weston had called her out on Twitter in the summer of 2022, Monica kept showing up month after month. It didn’t matter whether or not there was anything about library books on the agenda. Monica was always worried about the same thing.
MONICA BROWN: Because none of this is funny to me. I feel like it’s a raging fire and I’ve got a water pistol, and I’ve got really wonderful people who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.
DISTRICT STAFF: I hope everything is OK --
ANTONIA HYLTON: Monica claimed that she and her supporters only wanted to get rid of books with sexually explicit passages, not LGBTQ content specifically. But several of the titles she targeted for removal featured LGBTQ storylines but nothing sexually explicit. In one instance, Monica criticized a biography of notable women in part because it included the story of Christine Jorgensen, a transwoman who made national headlines in the 1950s for speaking openly about her gender confirmation surgery. Monica suggested replacing the book with a Christian biography series about girls and women who used their talents to serve God. Biographies of, quote, “truly great Americans,” she wrote to a school official. From the other side of the country, Weston had saw on social media that his mother’s rhetoric was escalating and decided that writing a few tweets wasn’t enough.
WESTON BROWN: Things have been kind of building to a place where I decided I wanted to go in person and stand at the same podium and speak at the same microphone to the same board members and to the same audience.
ANTONIA HYLTON: He decided to go to that same microphone in October 2022 to sound an alarm at the final meeting before Granbury school board elections that fall. Weston says he could feel the tension as he walked into the district admin building. He added his name to the list of speakers and found a seat in the back of the boardroom.
WESTON BROWN: And -- and the electricity is building in the room, or at least in my body. I’m feeling this -- this, uh, head to toe kind of tingling. And I’m just -- this is about to happen. And, um, they start to call names and eventually I hear --
DISTRICT STAFF: Weston Brown.
WESTON BROWN: As I’m walking up to the front, I see my mom sitting on the front row. I -- I didn’t tell her I was coming. My intention wasn’t to speak to her, it was to speak to the teachers and the students on the board.
WESTON BROWN: Hello, everyone, my name is Weston Brown. I was born and raised in Texas, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak here tonight. A few months ago, I saw my mom, Monica Brown --
WESTON BROWN: My -- my knees are shaking. I feel the trembling in my body.
WESTON BROWN: From a young age, I was taught to give a voice to people who were disregarded, elevate the marginalized, and love my neighbor. Today, I strive to be the person I needed when I was young. Someone who would stand up, speak out, and protect the kid that felt alone. Growing up, we read the Bible cover to cover from the earliest age I can remember. We repetitively read graphic depictions of sex, violence, genocide, sexual assault, and incest. However, topics related to dating, safe sex, drugs, alcohol, or sexual identity were deemed inappropriate or too heavy to discuss. I was profoundly alone. I knew I didn’t fit the blueprint for the life that my parents were grooming me for. I wanted so badly to know that someone like me could find peace, happiness, and love. I would’ve given anything to read a book with a character that felt the feelings I felt, asked the questions I couldn’t ask, and learned the lessons that I needed to learn. It’s been nearly five years since I came out to my family. I’m not allowed to join in family celebrations or holidays or be a part of my eight younger siblings’ lives, solely because I’m not straight. I’m here today to implore you to listen to librarians, educators, and students. Schools should represent all students, regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or background. Show the world that Granbury will not succumb to fear but will shine brightly, leading the way for the next generation of Texans. Thank you for listening. (APPLAUSE)
DISTRICT STAFF: Thank you, Mr. Brown.
WESTON BROWN: And I make it back and the room cheers. And, um, I’m surrounded by family, people that I don’t know, but that instantly there’s a kinship and a kindness and a support. And then I hear --
DISTRICT STAFF: Next up, we have Monica Brown.
MONICA BROWN: Thank you. And I knew that was coming, what came tonight. It’s no surprise. Not all true, but it is true that we have said no in our home for what we expect in our family, raising other children. And it’s all -- it’s beyond being out of order sexually, whether that matters to any of you or not. But back to the discussion --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: With that, Monica pivoted back to the same subject that had become her obsession: demanding to know what the district was going to do to keep children safe from library books.
MONICA BROWN: It’s not book-banning, it’s boundaries for student libraries for minors, for goodness’ sake. Somebody put a lot of books in this system that aren’t supposed to be there. Tell us why it’s educational. Tell us why it’s appropriate so we can understand your mindset. Yes, Weston’s right. We read the Bible cover to cover, but we never had sexually explicit -- Just as an example, you know, in the scripture it says Adam knew Eve. That’s not the same as saying he’s stuck his dick in her body. And that’s what you’ve got in your library. Listen, that’s what you’ve got, y’all.
VOICE FROM CROWD: In your library. It’s in your library.
MONICA BROWN: It’s in your library, y’all. I’m gonna go now. I publish it all. I publish it all, you can see --
DISTRICT STAFF: Thank you, Ms. Brown.
MONICA BROWN: -- see it.
DISTRICT STAFF: Thank you, Ms. Brown.
MONICA BROWN: I’ll go. I’ll go. I -- I’m sorry about the decisions y’all are making.
WESTON BROWN: And she closes her notebook and sits back down. And, you know, two or three people with her stood up and clapped very loudly.
VOICE FROM CROWD: That’s explicit.
WESTON BROWN: And a few others showed their support. But you could see the eyes starting back and forth in the room trying to read my face, trying to read her face. I didn’t get up and crumble and cry and -- and stay in the place of hurt. But I got to speak to hopefully someone who could listen.
ANTONIA HYLTON: By the time of Weston and Monica’s showdown in Granbury, evangelical Christian activists had sent a clear signal about what books they didn’t want kids to read and what lessons they didn’t want them to hear. To Weston, his story is a reminder of what some evangelicals do want children to learn: that being gay, or transgender is a sin, and that the only way to redemption is through Jesus. But he doesn’t think they’ll win.
WESTON BROWN: Get rid of the books, but, like, you’re not stopping the internet. You’re not stopping this. Like, this is -- we’re not going backwards. Like, your kids are on TikTok and that -- like, go off, get rid of the books, fine. We are going to find each other. We’re going to connect. And we’re gonna share our stories in a million ways that is so much broader than what you can do. And I -- I just believe that so deeply.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Weston was taking the long view. But in the short term, people who share his mother’s beliefs were notching a lot of victories. Only a few weeks after his visit to Granbury, voters there elected Monica’s friend and political ally to the school board. Then, the US Department of Education announced it had opened an investigation into Superintendent Glenn’s order to remove library books, setting the stage for a legal battle that could take months or years to resolve.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In the meantime, in places like Granbury and Grapevine, books were coming off shelves. And by late 2022, teachers like Em Ramser were beginning to wonder whether they should follow them out the door.
ANTONIA HYLTON: As Weston publicly confronted his mother in the fall of 2022, 65 miles away, the pressure campaign to purge Grapevine-Colleyville schools of “woke” books and lessons was taking a toll on educators at the ASPIRE Academy at Grapevine High. In November, three months after the school board adopted its sweeping policy banning lessons on gender fluidity and systemic racism, Amanda Guthrie, a veteran ASPIRE social studies teacher, abruptly resigned in the middle of the school year.
AMANDA GUTHRIE: I was so heartbroken that the job I had been able to do successfully for so many years was changed so drastically --
ANTONIA HYLTON: Guthrie told us over the phone that she decided to quit when she realized she might get in trouble for teaching her students the truth about racism or anti-LGBTQ movements in America’s history.
AMANDA GUTHRIE: When the district adopted these policies and board members had been talking about this list of teachers that they had, uh, that is what created the pressure to leave.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Another factor, Guthrie said, was the silence she observed from school district leaders after the Dallas Express printed its article accusing fellow ASPIRE teacher Em Ramser of “infecting” one of her students with radical ideas about gender. Guthrie worked closely with Ramser, and she saw how much the attacks affected her.
AMANDA GUTHRIE: She was such a master in her craft, a content expert, a teaching expert. And, really, her wings were clipped from this. To see that the -- how little support they gave her through that was shocking and very disheartening. Certainly contributed to my decision.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: For now, that fall, Ramser was still planning to stick it out at Grapevine. But she’d also begun thinking again about walking away. She hardly recognized the teacher she’d become in the months since Sharla accused her of indoctrinating Ren. She’d gotten into teaching hoping to inspire a love of reading in kids, and because she wanted to be a positive role model for LGBTQ teens. But she wouldn’t know that from her classroom now.
EM RAMSER: It’s kind of sad, to be honest. You know, previous years like I had bookshelves, and they were filled with books and at one point we had, like, the GSA donated a rainbow flag. And I had artwork that had been made by the GSA network, a contest that they had put on. So I had these little cool pieces of artwork. And it’s -- it’s all gone because I’ve been asked to remove my books. I’ve been asked -- I had to take those pieces of artwork down because an administrator said that they might be misconstrued if somebody walked into my room. I’ve -- it’s -- it’s been consistently stripping every bit of personality away.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: A Grapevine-Colleyville spokesperson told us that no teacher was forced to remove their classroom libraries. But Ramser and two other educators, and a senior administrator who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, told us Ramser was one of several teachers at the high school who removed every book from their class libraries in order to avoid running afoul of the district’s vague new content restrictions.
EM RAMSER: They’re scattered. Most of them are in here.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The books that once filled Ramser’s class library are now stacked on shelves in her apartment.
EM RAMSER: Yeah, so these ones, actually, the “Rainbow Boys” series from, um, Alex Sanchez, were the first like LGBTQ books I ever -- like, one of the first ones I ever read growing up. And it would a hundred percent get me in trouble now because A, it’s talking about LGBTQ stuff, but I think also they talk about AIDS and, like, you know, things all associated with that. This one, “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” super great LGBTQ book that I think has been complained about quite a bit as of late. You know, it’s like how many books I had on one shel -- or like one bookshelf that’s -- would be a problem for parents at this point --
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser is searching for the book that kicked off this whole ordeal. She eventually finds it, “The Prince and the Dressmaker,” among a pile of books collecting dust in the trunk of her car.
EM RAMSER: Mm-hmm, these are ones that I took to the local bookstore to try to sell and couldn’t. They were, like, not interested. Let me set that back in there. Okay. So we have it.
ANTONIA HYLTON: There it is.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And tattered.
EM RAMSER: Um, yeah, because it’s been read so much, um, that even like the spine is wearing out really badly.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser flips through and finds a passage toward the end that has always stood out to her. The king, after discovering his son’s secret, is expressing his gratitude to the dressmaker.
EM RAMSER: “When I first learned the truth, I thought Sebastian’s life would be ruined, but seeing you, I realized everything would be fine because someone still loved him.” I think there’s a nice little point there of, like, you know, even when things are absolutely horrid, it’s -- as long as you have somebody out there caring for you, you know, it’s gonna be okay.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser hadn’t spoken to Ren since the teen left Texas. But now that she knows what her former student’s home life was like, she wonders how Ren processed that passage when she read it. But when we asked Ren what she thought of the book…
REN: So I heard good things about the book, uh, um, I’d never actually read it. So, this whole situation’s kind of… It would be really funny if it wasn’t so sad.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: So you never actually read it?
REN: No, I never read it.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Not even part of it?
REN: No. I, like, I opened it. I think maybe I looked at the first page, but I’m just… It’s hard to get into books for me, you know? So, I just never read it.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Even if she had read the book -- even if she’d seen herself reflected in its story -- Ren told us it wouldn’t have changed things. She’d come out to Sharla a year before she’d even met Ramser. And parents are kidding themselves, she said, if they think books are making students queer.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ren heard from friends how Ramser’s class had been transformed after Sharla ‘s accusations. It was upsetting.
REN: I wish that it didn’t have to be that way because it wasn’t Ms. Ramser’s fault that any of that happened. And she was a good supportive figure in my life. She was a good thing that happened to me. That’s exactly what got her in trouble. That she was open and kind and friendly and cared about you.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser smiles when we tell her how Ren feels about her. It surprises her.
EM RAMSER: Glad to know that. I am. It’s kind of hard because, like, you never know what like lands with a kid and what doesn’t, right? Like, there are some days where you’re, like, you think somebody absolutely hates you the whole year. And then, like, at the end of the year you get like the little note that’s, like, you’re the only person who, like, saw me.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Is there anything you want Ren to know?
EM RAMSER: I’m proud of her. And I’m proud of her for advocating for herself.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: As we talk on her couch, Ramser gets a phone call. She wipes her tears, takes a swig of water, and puts on the same smile that she’s been faking at school all year.
PARENT: Hello?
EM RAMSER: Hi, this is Emily.
PARENT: How are you doing?
EM RAMSER: Good.
PARENT: How are you?
EM RAMSER: I’m making it, now that AP Research is over.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: A mom from a local parent organization, a booster group for the district’s ASPIRE gifted program, has been hinting that they plan to honor Ramser with an award.
PARENT: Well, I just wanted to call you and apologize --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But it turns out the prize is going to another educator, Ramser’s supervisor.
PARENT: So, um, but I want you to know that I heard from so many people who were like, can we have two? Like why do we not have two awards? I wanna have two awards.
Like they’re very upset. And so I just want you to know, um, that you are loved and adored and appreciated by so many people. And so I -- I hope that you know that and I hope that you feel that.
EM RAMSER: Thank you. That’s very kind.
PARENT: So we love you and I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day.
EM RAMSER: Thank you. I appreciate it.
PARENT: Okay. No worries. All right.
EM RAMSER: Bye.
PARENT: Bye-bye.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser sits quietly for a moment. She didn’t get into education to win awards, but all year she’s felt as if she’d been disqualified from recognition at the district because of everything that happened between her and Sharla and Ren. Like the district and other groups were afraid to be associated with her.
EM RAMSER: We’ve had this constant thing this year about I can’t be given awards or win any awards because of optics. So it’s been something that’s been also brought up pretty regularly. That I’m not gonna be acknowledged for anything because it would look bad. So it’s like -- it’s like I don’t exist publicly for the school -- in the school district. No matter what I do, they don’t acknowledge me.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Em says the friendly phone call, which she genuinely appreciated, seemed to follow a pattern in Grapevine of people showing her kindness and support in private while avoiding taking a stance in public.
EM RAMSER: It’s -- it’s nice words. But to an extent, it always feels empty because where were these parents when I was getting harassed? Where were they when I was fighting for my job? And, yes, they were doing things behind the scenes, but everybody’s doing things behind the scenes and nobody’s willing to step up and say, hey, this is messed up, stop. You can say that you love my teaching and love me privately all you want, but it doesn’t do anything.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The community would soon have its chance to declare exactly where it stood. There were three more seats coming open on the Grapevine-Colleyville school board, with the election set for May 2023. For those wanting the district to move in a different direction, it was an opportunity to retake control from the far right. And this time, a coalition of progressive parents and disillusioned conservatives were promising to do what Ramser says had been lacking. They were going to take a public stand, challenge Patriot Mobile at its own game, and fight for the future of their children’s education.
SERGIO HARRIS: Yeah, I -- I -- I hate the narrative that they push that they are the ones that are bestowed or chosen by God to fix education or fix this district, as if there are no other Christians walking around this place right now.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But it wasn’t going to be an easy road. Evangelical activists in Grapevine were rallying around their own new slate of candidates. While at the same time, fundamentalists were advancing on another front in their drive to put God back in schools: at the Texas statehouse.
NATE SCHATZLINE: There is nothing more important than we could be doing than this right here, worshiping and praying in the middle of the capital.
ANTONIA HYLTON: That’s next on Grapevine. From NBC News Studios, this is the fourth of six episodes of Grapevine, a series about faith, power, and what it means to protect children in an American suburb. Grapevine was written, reported, and hosted by me, Antonia Hylton.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And by me, Mike Hixenbaugh. The series is produced by Frannie Kelley. Our senior editor is Julie Shapiro, with story editing by Michelle Garcia. We had production support from Emily Berk and Eva Ruth Moravec. Fact checking by Janina Huang. Sound design by Rick Kwan. Original music by Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Bryson Barnes is our technical director. Alexa Danner is our executive producer. Marisa Reilly is the director of production and Liz Cole runs NBC News Studios.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Special thanks to our reporting partners at ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, including Jeremy Schwartz and Zahira Torres for working with us to document the political fight in Granbury.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: If this is the first time you’re hearing a podcast made by us, you might want to also listen to the one we made a couple years ago about the town next door. It’s called Southlake, and it’s almost a prequel to this one. Search for Southlake wherever you’re listening now.
