Anti-Trans Policies Passed By Arkansas School Board As Resident Threatens LGBT People With ‘Death': Report

The Conway School District in Arkansas passed a series of anti-transgender policies on Tuesday as a viral video showed a man wishing death and threatening to hurt the LGBT community in general.

A general bathroom ban against transgender students was instituted during a meeting with the Conway School District’s board, and two books about the transgender experience, “Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out” and “Felix Ever After,” were also banned from the school library, according to the Arkansas Times.

A variety of strong reactions were received from the community, with many in the local queer community saying that the discriminatory policies would be detrimental to the health and welfare of the transgender students in the school, THV11 reported.

“It makes me feel sad because I personally know many transgender young women and young men, and I know the difficulty of their journey,” Linda Tyler, a resident of the area, said.

But the contentious meeting found itself veering towards anger from some the more virulent anti-LGBT residents, with a video of a gray-haired man wishing death to the LGBT community going viral online, the Daily Beast reported.

“God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they do what they should not be doing,” he said. “They invent ways of doing evil. But let me remind you that those who do such things deserve death. The LGBT community, not only continues to do these very things, but also approves of those who practice them.”

As LGBT protesters were kept away by officers waiting outside of the school, Arkansas Sen. Jason Rapert was seen attending the meeting and making a statement of approval regarding the bans.

“God made males and females, and we appreciate and recognize the differences between the two sexes. The overwhelming majority of people in this community support the Conway school district adhering to those facts in your policies, your rules, your regulations,” he said.

The new policies do not give out alternatives for transgender students on where they can use the bathroom in their schools, and the approved policies are believed to be in violation of Title IX, which prevents discrimination based on sex.