Glendale activists fight for LGBTQ+ inclusivity in schools

It all started back in 2019 when a 62-year-old transgender male painter and community member, Grey James, facilitated multiple art shows in Glendale.

James felt that LGBTQ youth in the Glendale community needed a safe space and outlets to express their creativity. This was one of his motivations for creating glendaleOUT, a grassroots organization established in 2019 that centers on changing the narrative of queerness and providing safe spaces for LGBTQ+ identities.

After the art shows, James was invited to attend planning meetings for other art shows with the help of Glendale Unified School District educators. Alicia Harris, who teaches at Crescenta Valley High, saw James’ artwork at an invite-only closed art show for adults for Pride Month in 2019. Harris, a co-advisor of the Gender Sexuality Alliance, welcomed the conversations that ensued with students about the need for inclusivity.

Four years later, Glendale is at the epicenter of a national anti-trans movement waged by far-right groups such as “Leave Our Kids Alone” that are influential in California school districts such as Chino Valley, which voted in favor of a policy notifying parents if a student was transgender. This policy was banned earlier this year by a judge to increase protections for LGBTQ youth. Other schools and districts are having a similar dilemma, such as Orange Unified, Temecula Valley Unified, Rocklin Unified, and Anderson Union.

Specific attacks towards community members such as Grey James from members of the GUSD Parents' Voices group illustrate the haunting aftereffects of the June 6th anti-LGBTQ+.

He did not know that one day his image would be seen by members of an anti-LGBTQ extremist group called GUSD Parents’ Voices.

Since then, James has continuously been a target of harassment. The art shown at his shows was age-appropriate. James also makes art that contains nudity that is professionally sold at galleries across the world to adults and is not shown to minors.

James’ gender is often used as a tool in a lot of the messaging on social media and at school board meetings.

“There's a whole array of things going on out there. You're discussing my genitals in public at a school board meeting,” said james. “Yet I'm the one who is grooming, who is inappropriate – but you're doing it in the most ignorant of ways.”

GUSD Parents’ Voices realized that the two had a working relationship and labeled them as “good ole’ leftists” after learning that they connected at a closed invite-only art show that took place five years ago.

Harris has also been subject to attacks on the group’s social media pages, yet she has decided not to look at the page for her own sanity. The group also posted flyers about Harris on Brand Blvd., calling her a groomer and pedophile.

The GUSD Parents’ Voices group is run by several anti-LGBTQ extremists and a mixture of southern California residents who do not have kids in the GUSD school system but lives in La Crescenta—most notably, Glendale Board of Education 2024 candidate Jordan Henry. The group has ties to other groups such as The Proud Boys, Leave Our Kids Alone, and Gays Against Groomers according to therealjordanhenry.com. They showed their presence during the controversial and national June 6th anti-LGBTQ protests. Many of the group members are not parents of GUSD youth.

One member of the hate group attended a GUSD school board meeting to share that the hate group is not a part of the overall Glendale community.

“We are not your community. 'Ours' is a first-person plural possessive; we don’t belong to you. I know you think we do, but we don’t,” said Shelton. Ray Shelton has attended multiple GUSD school board meetings, often to harass board members and Grey James.

Another GUSD parent's voice member, Belissa Cohen, emphasizes that she supports lesbian, gay, and bisexual people but not transgender people at a recent school board meeting. She is also affiliated with a group called Gays Against Groomers and identifies as a lesbian, gay and bisexual activist yet targets Grey James.

"Everything after the LGB is for straight people. There is a woman who calls herself Gray James. She calls herself a gay man when she is really a woman,” says Cohen. “She is obsessed with penises.” Cohen repeatedly mentions Gray James' physical transition, genitalia, and art when she speaks at school board meetings.

As an artist who has sold an array of pieces, James has been labeled as a pedophile, groomer, and predator by the hate group. One of his paintings, “Pink Jerk Off Boy”, is a painting that the hate group printed out on t-shirts and went to a GUSD school board meeting, in which they were asked to leave.

Grey James "Pink Jerk Off Boy" altered. Courtesy of GUSD Parents Voices' Instagram

James stands his ground against the allegations as his art is weaponized and used as a ploy for far-right extremist rhetoric.

“They are pouncing on the title of this painting, literally thinking I am painting an underage boy because of the word boy,” says James. “ It is not an actual underage boy. I don't paint nude boys. EVER. I also have a painting called Lemon Boy. It's a term, a meme, neither new nor unusual, and usually humorous. It's not literal.”

James paintings highlight the vulnerability of the male body which is shown in galleries and exhibits across the country.

The art that James facilitates with students at art shows is youth approproaite and is being distorted with accusations of pedophilia by members of GUSD Parents' Voices.

Student art work from art show. Photo courtesy of Grey James

GUSD educator and co-advisor of the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) at Crescenta Valley High School, Alicia Harris, feels that Grey James has been the most targeted, despite being a target herself. The principal of Crescenta Valley High School has received multiple emails for months suggesting that Harris should be fired.

Hate groups such as GUSD Parents’ Voices are mimicking tactics they are seeing across the country from other hate groups to instill fear, according to Harris.

“These people are talking and saying that Grey’s art was showcased around our school–of course it was not, nor was anything of that variety,” said Harris.

Angela Givant is the parent of a 13-year-old teenager who “is in a space of questioning their gender and sexuality,” says Givant. She says that her goal as a parent is to remain supportive of her child. Givant is supportive of James’ efforts and welcomes his presence in the Glendale community. She has also attended school board meetings and art shows, which has also made her a target for the hate group.

Her husband has also received hate mail and social media slander from Parents' Voices, and she worries about her child.

"They tagged my husband at one point,” says Givant. “It's unpleasant, and I don't want any of it to fall onto my child, who's an eighth grader.” In addition to her family’s safety, she worries about Grey James' safety.

Other parents have not felt safe sharing their support of Grey James publicly in fear of retaliation from the Parents’ Voices group.

While his art poses no threat to the youth of the GUSD school district, members of GUSD Parents Voices, Jordan Henry, led the hate group's effort by wearing the shirts to a school board meeting. Once he was asked to leave, he “went outside to his car and screamed for 12 minutes,” according to James. After the incident, the hate group posted 20–30 Instagram stories about Grey James.

Student art work from art show. Photo courtesy of Grey James

Grey James has allies in the community, such as a parent and community organizer, Angela Givant. Givant met Grey James during a school board meeting held in April. Shelton came to the group with a rainbow pride flag made into a swastika, a symbol influenced by Adolf Hitler that now represents hate and anti-Semitism. Members of the audience started to cry as the symbol was waved.

Ray Shelton and Jordan Henry with rainbow Swatiska. Photo courtesy of Angela Givant.

“I saw the sign, and without thinking, I reacted, and I yelled at the person. I yelled at the security who was in the room to take it out of the room because there were kids,” said Givant. “It took place on Yom Hashoah, one of the Holocaust Remembrance Days." Givant felt it was inappropriate for Shelton to wave the symbol at the school board meeting.

Some LGBTQ students have also spoken up at school board meetings and have also been attacked on social media.

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed several pro-LGBTQ laws, such as the Safe and Supportive Schools Act (AB 5), the LGBTQ Advisory Task Force for LGBQ People’s Needs (SB 857) and the change of gender and sex identifier (AB 223).

Brought to the floor by assembly member Rick Chavez Zbur,51st District the Safe and Supportive Schools Act focuses on “providing high-quality, professional development opportunities to educators to help foster inclusive classroom environments” to address the unique challenges of LGBTQ students.