News from the Pine Tree State
A good turn
When TikTok star Meredith Steele of Bath, Maine, heard about an openly gay waiter twice stiffed by customers leaving Christian pamphlets as their “tips,” Steele took the case to her more than 478,000 followers—who pulled together enough funds to give that waiter a generous tip … and gift the remaining $10,500 to EqualityMaine, the Portland-based LGBTQ advocacy nonprofit, in the waiter’s name.
“This is not how people—Christians especially—treat one another,” Steele posted to her followers, reports The Times Record via the Portland Press Herald website.
“Regardless of your personal opinion, someone’s sexual orientation has absolutely nothing to do with how they do their job,” Steele said. “It’s never your time or place to make a comment like that. It infuriated me.”
EqualityMaine’s Development Director Christopher O’Conner told The Times Record that the donation sent 10 young adults to the nonprofit’s New Leaders overnight camp.
Funds for school training
OUT Maine, the Rockland-based nonprofit supporting LGBTQ youth, has received a $25,000 grant from the Florence V. Burden Foundation. The funds will help develop five online training modules for school professional to better provide safetly and support for LGBTQ youth.
“It’s a challenge sometimes making sure our schools are safe, welcoming, and affirming for queer young people,” OUT Maine Executive Director Jeanne Dooley to WCSH-TV’s News Center Maine. “Many schools in Maine really want to do the best that they can for these young people. This set of training modules is designed for those schools.”
More: outmaine.org
SCOTUS and religious schools
In July, the US Supreme Court added a case to their next term that will once again involve “the growing conflict over providing government benefits to private religious schools that refuse to admit or hire LGBTQ students and staff,” reported Education Week.
The case challenges Maine’s “exclusion of religious schools from its program of paying private school tuition for students in communities without high schools,” says EdWeek, which goes on to explain, “The justices granted review in Carson v. Makin, which involves a quirky type of tuition-assistance program found in just a handful of states but may have implications for religious school choice nationwide.”
“The Maine case involves two families who have sought reimbursement for sending their children to religious schools under the state’s long-standing ‘tuitioning’ program, which pays private school fees for students in communities without high schools.
“Maine has barred ‘sectarian’ schools from the tuitioning program since 1980, when the state’s attorney general issued an opinion determining that allowing the aid to flow to religious schools that ‘promote a faith or belief system’ would violate the First Amendment’s bar on government establishment of religion.”
Trans equality wins
In July, the Pine Tree State’s Senate killed a bill to ban transgender girls from playing on girls school sports teams by adjourning their session without taking it up. Back in June, the state’s House had already voted against this bill, and both the House and Senate voted down another bill that would have let shelters turn away any woman because of their gender ID or sexual orientation as well as their race, national origin, religion or disability.
“I’m proud to see our Maine legislators support inclusion for transgender girls and women. I know well from my own work in the community that transgender women experience some of the highest rates of housing insecurity, harassment, and violence among women in Maine,” said MaineTransNet’s Executive Director Quinn Gormley.
Said Gia Drew, program director at Equality Maine, “Once again Mainers have stood up for fairness by saying no to harmful proposals that would ban transgender girls from school sports and deny transgender women access to shelter and vital social services. As students, parents, coaches, and pediatricians testified, transgender girls who play sports simply want and deserve the same opportunity as their peers to be part of a team, to feel like they belong, and to develop important qualities like leadership, self-respect, and teamwork. The Maine legislature has sent a message to transgender kids that they belong.”
More: glad.org
