12-Year-Old Boy Asks City Council Why There’s No Law To Protect His Lesbian Moms From Discrimination

A 12-year-old boy just joined the fight for LGBTQ rights in Olathe, Kansas.

LGBTQ advocates in Olathe, Kansas have been fighting to pass anti-discrimination laws in the city for over two years. Now, a young boy is joining the fight: the 12-year-old son of two lesbian moms.

Jak Guimbellot accompanied one of his moms to a recent Olathe City Council meeting to go ask why they won’t pass any laws to protect his moms.

“I just don’t understand why if I’m with my mothers and we decide to go to a restaurant to eat, that we can be denied access and have to eat somewhere else,” Jak said.

“I don’t understand why my parents and I can be denied access to an apartment [because they’re lesbian] or why they can be fired from a job.”

Jak explained to The Kansas City Star that he told all of this to the city council.

“I also said that in school we’re taught to treat everyone equally and that everyone is amazing and special, but then there’s grown adults here who don’t understand that they’re not treating everyone equally,” he said.

Advocates first approached the city council in 2016 about banning discrimination on the basis of a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Since then, the community has watched several neighboring cities pass similar non-discrimination ordinances within a matter of weeks. But in Olathe, it’s still an on-going battle.

Jak’s moms were initially hesitant to bring him to the city council meeting because of the “horrific slurs that are projected towards the LGBTQ community.”

“I don’t care for my son to hear those things said about me, that I’m a deviant or a pedophile,” mom Kate said.

“But at some point, I finally said he has a right to go ask this question.”

Clearly, this legislation is long overdue.


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