Donald Trump’s campaign heavily featured the sentiment of “returning the power to the states”, especially on education. He plays to do this by defunding the Department of Education. However, this change would dramatically impact queer students as they will lose their access to mental health resources.

This isn’t the first time the Republican Party or a President wanted to dismantle the Department of Education. Since the department started action in the ‘80s either the republican party or a president has tried to dismantle it four different times, including presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Trump and republican officials such as Lamar Alexander. In the ’80s Reagan set out to abolish the Department but was unsuccessful due to being unable to convince the Democrats–the majority in the House of Representatives.

However, the recent election has led to the House of Representatives being majority Republican, leaving the Democrats as the minority.

Besides the sides being flipped in the House of Representatives, nothing much has changed since the last time the Republican Party tried to take down the Department of Education. However, the last time they did this the big concern around teenagers was rock and roll and the further divergence from the Christian, male-dominated society their forefathers so desperately wanted.

Instead of listening to heavy metal and becoming sexually liberated, kids these days want to explore their gender identity and sexual orientation. The older generations have never been okay with what the younger generations choose to explore. When a child chooses to push the boundaries of the societal hole they’ve been put in, it tends to ruffle a few feathers.

It has always been seen as “wrong” to push boundaries, especially when those boundaries are something as controversial as gender identity or sexual orientation.

It makes it even worse when these two things are so easy to make another person–especially a child–feel ashamed of. It’s easy to be mean when someone believes they are in the face of the wrong.

The source of this comes from hate and bigotry and the need to feel right in the face of a perceived “wrong”. This doesn’t stop once students exit the hallways of the school–it continues via social media. So truthfully, there’s no escape from the cruelty against queer students.

The Department of Education funds schools to have counselors, resource officers, psychologists, and other resources for student mental health.

These resources help all students, but especially queer students who are suffering from different forms of bullying and harassment.

Eddie Storts, an openly gay student at Verrado, explained that he has received all sorts of support in the past from student support specialists at Verrado High School.

“During my freshman year, they were a very big support for me…It’s tough to grow a thick skin, even though I was bullied for years before high school, it was definitely a change. There were more people and meaner people.”

Nothing is worse for a student than hating the one place you spend eight hours a day, five days a week. The constant harassment and feeling of hateful eyes glazing over you, always knowing that the only way to get it to stop is to change who you fundamentally are. When a student experiences bullying or harassment–especially when it deals with their identity–it can be life or death.

Sorin Gaskill, when asked if this bullying ever felt like life or death, explained, “The bullying had gotten so severe that it became physical and I hid to avoid being physically hurt…Over time I fell into a deep depression and had attempted suicide multiple times.”

The question is, why does the Republican Party keep trying to attack the Department of Education when queer students are already so disadvantaged in the school system?

The clear answer is that they want to silence queer people in general. States like Florida and Texas constantly promote homophobic and transphobic laws such as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and the “Woke” bill.

They are trying to keep any form of queerness out of the school systems because, as said before, they feel the need to be right in the face of a “wrong”, and homosexuality is a large wrong to the majority of Republicans.

The best thing that can be done for queer youth is to protect them from bigotry, whether it is systematic or from one student to another.

Keeping these students safe by promoting proper discussions on the topic of gender and sexual orientation would be the best way to combat the actions of conservative lawmakers.