These LGBTQ+ Virginia kids found support and community in school. Then, bigoted adults took that away

I grew up unable to say the word “pee.” If it slipped out, I had my mouth washed out with soap. I couldn’t swear until I was 18. I’d get slapped in the face if I did.I’ve thought about that a lot over the years, because now I curse like a sailor, and I’ve come to believe that’s not a coincidence. When you suppress a kid, when you tell them, over and over, in ways big and small, that who they are or what they say or how they exist is wrong, it doesn’t disappear.It exacerbates. It goes somewhere. For me, it came out later as foul language and, less amusingly, as years of depression I now understand were tangled up with a childhood spent desperately hiding who I was.There was no Gay-Straight Alliance when I was in middle school. There was no safe space, no flyer on a bulletin board, no faculty sponsor, no one I knew who felt like I did. I was a popular kid, but I was lonely and tormented.Terror reigned because I was petrified of being found out. I would have been beaten up. I know that for sure.It got so bad that I once went into the boys’ lavatory — that’s what they were called back then — and furiously banged my head against a wall until a nun came in and stopped me.So when I tell you that watching kids finally get to do what I never could, walk into a classroom, sit at a lunch table, and say, “I’m gay" or "I’m trans,” or "I’m not sure yet, but I’m figuring it out,” and have that be met with a shrug instead of a punch — well, that’s been one of the great quiet joys of the last fifteen years.Which is what makes King George County, Virginia, so enraging and heartbreaking. Adults treating queer kids like lepers, all but guaranteeing they are pushed into the kind of isolation, shame, and psychological distress that can leave lifelong scars.Here’s the short version, because I don’t want to spend this column re-litigating it. Instead, I want to refer you to my wonderful colleague, politics and news editor Christopher Wiggins, a