Anti-LGBT protesters picket Brevard School Board member Jennifer Jenkins’ home – Florida Today
The homophobic protests that drew criticism at a March 9 Brevard Public School Board meeting arrived Thursday evening at the Satellite Beach home of board member Jennifer Jenkins.
Jenkins and her kindergarten-age daughter and husband were out of town when the protesters arrived, but learned of the display from neighbors and city officials.
The protesters held signs with slogans such as “two genders & one crazy-evil school board” and “LGBTQ agenda is ungodly,” along with some decrying mask mandates. Her neighbors told her the protesters approached them and called them “pedophile lovers.”
Jenkins’ said the protesters told her father-in-law that they would be outside her home every night.
“I don’t even know what I would do if I was home with my daughter right now,” Jenkins told FLORIDA TODAY during a Thursday night phone call. “It’s the same people that were screaming in deputy sheriff’s faces. I understand freedom of speech and everything, but the fact that they’re doing this in a residential neighborhood is (expletive) disgusting to me.”
The protesters appear to include members present at the March 9 school board meeting, including a megaphone-wielding man who gives his name as “Thomas Jefferson” and when asked, said that he and his fellow protesters are “affiliated only with Jesus Christ.”
The March 9 school board meeting attracted 40 speakers after the social media websites circulated documents detailing the Brevard School District’s practices for accommodating LGBTQ students, which included measures to allow transgender students to join sports teams and use bathrooms according to the gender with which they identify. The policies immediately drew criticism from parents and groups such as Moms for Liberty, a conservative parent advocacy group.
Protesters both for and against the policies arrived before the meeting and held dueling demonstrations. Anti-LGBTQ protesters remained outside and heckled speakers, including LGBTQ children, as they entered the building to speak.
Previously:Brevard School guidelines on trans bathrooms and sports spur social media outrage
Opinion:‘Why the silence’ from local GOP leaders in face of hostile behavior?
The school district and board both said that the guidelines keep the district in compliance with federal and state laws and can’t be changed without violating the law and risking funding.
The protesters drew condemnation from the School Board and speakers at the meeting, including many of the people who had come to criticize the guidelines. Moms for Liberty leadership say that the protesters were not affiliated with them.
Jenkins was supportive of the guidelines at the meeting. She wore a rainbow pride mask and spoke supportively to the LGBTQ students holding signs before the meeting.
Susan Hodgers, a former district chair of the Brevard Republican Executive Committee and a Satellite High School graduate, said she was “disgusted” by the protest. She said she has encountered the same protesters in the past, once outside the school board meeting and once earlier this week at the corner of Highway A1A and Eau Gallie Boulevard, where they were flying “Trump 2024” flags.
At the school board meeting they called her a “gay lover.” At the stop light they commented on the children in her car to each other via megaphone, with one saying to the other, “We’re gonna raise those kids in a nice, straight American country where it’s safe for them to go to the bathroom without being afraid of pedophiles.”
“I went to school here,” Hodgers said. “This is my stomping ground … When I went to high school here, we didn’t have this kind of stuff. This is insanity.”
Jenkins said she has no problem answering phone calls and emails from constituents, but that showing up at her home is a step too far.
“This is my home,” Jenkins said. “This is my family. This is so disgusting. … If you have a problem with me, you call me and email me, you come to a public comment. You don’t come to my home.”
The Satellite Beach Police Department has not returned a request for comment.
Bailey Gallion is the education reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallion at 321-242-3786 or bgallion@floridatoday.com.