Reporting Goes National on Federal Lawsuit Against King George School Board for Blocking Student-Run LGBTQ+ Club
THE FXBG ADVANCE MONDAY 8/10/26 MIDDAY READ
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
The Advocate, the nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ publication, expanded coverage of the King George School Board’s anti-LGBTQ actions last week with a series of articles, one of them headlined “A Virginia school board bent over backward to block an LGBTQ+ club. One mom explains why she’s suing.”
The subhead: “Susan Park says she filed a federal lawsuit after the King George County School Board repeatedly rewrote its rules to keep a gay-straight alliance from forming.”
Here’s how that August 6 Advocate article begins:
Susan Park’s child has already advanced from King George Middle School, about an hour and 20 minutes southeast of Washington, D.C. The eighth-grade year in which he hoped to join a gay-straight alliance, make friends and find some relief from bullying is over. That time cannot be returned to him. When school starts, he will enter King George High School.
Park could have allowed the dispute over the club to become another family’s problem. Instead, on Tuesday, she, along with the family of another student, filed a federal lawsuit so that the next LGBTQ+ student in this rural Virginia county might receive what her child was denied.
“I joined this suit because even though my kid has moved on and is not in middle school anymore, I think this club would be a wonderful thing,” Park told The Advocate in an interview Wednesday. “I want them to be able to form this club and create that community.”
You can read the rest of the article HERE.
Another Advocate story posted earlier last week ran under the headline, “A rural Virginia school board changed its rules to block an LGBTQ+ club. Students are suing in federal court,” with the summary line, “The lawsuit says King George County officials allowed students to skin squirrels in another group and told LGBTQ+ students to disguise their gay-straight alliance as a ‘Kindness Club,’ before blocking it altogether.”
The FXBG Advance posted a press release from the ACLU last Tuesday announcing the lawsuit. The Fredericksburg Free Press followed up on Saturday with a well-researched story, “ACLU of Virginia files lawsuit on behalf of King George middle school students who sought to form LGBTQ+-supportive club.”
The Advance had also published a letter to the editor back in January from one of the plaintiffs, Susan Park, “King George County Schools want to disallow Gay-Straight Alliance clubs. But banning a GSA would send the message that LGBTQ+ identities are wrong or inappropriate.”
The lawsuit is seeking $1 in damages and asking King George school officials to let the Genders and Sexualities Alliance club form at King George Middle School and hold meetings and activities the same as other student clubs.
The Advocate, a national bi-monthly print and online newsmagazine with an announced circulation of 175,000, had previously reported on the KGSB actions and their affect on students. That January article was titled “Virginia school board adopts anti-transgender policy and blocks LGBTQ+ club,” along with the subhead, “’They don’t realize how large a part of their school those kids make up,’ a queer middle school student told The Advocate.”
The lede:
Just days before LGBTQ+ ally Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, is set to replace Virginia’s anti-trans Republican governor Glenn Youngkin when she is sworn in on Saturday, a rural school board has adopted a sweeping new policy restricting transgender students, while simultaneously continuing to block a proposed middle school Gender and Sexualities Alliance.
Advocate writer John Casey followed both stories late last week with his commentary—“These LGBTQ+ Virginia kids found support and community in school. Then, bigoted adults took that away”—which you can read HERE.
King George School Board officials aren’t commenting, and have yet to file a response to the lawsuit. No court date has been set on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction that would allow the Genders and Sexualities Alliance to form and operate.
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Steve Watkins is editor of The Advance.
