Greenway Middle School flooded with green Pittsburgh Public School Pride shirts Wednesday morning. The school hosted the fourth annual Gender Inclusive Schools Community Summit, attracting over 100 students, faculty and community members.
The event opened with a student speech from Frankie Honick, a senior GSA member, who asked the audience to remember the life of Nex Benedict, a non-binary high school student who was found dead in their home after a long history of bullying related to their gender identity.
Honick said that it is not Benedict’s life that was tragic and called out the people and systems in place that led to their death in February.
“What happened to Nex Benedict is what is tragic. It’s a failure,” Honick said. “It's a failure on the state. It's a failure on the school system. It's a failure of those who taught their children hate and the teens around our ages who acted upon that hate.”
Honick ended the speech with a call to action to keep fighting for the rights of queer people before handing the stage to the summit’s keynote speaker, Pittsburgh Police Chief Larry Scirotto.
Scirotto, a Pittsburgh native, is the city’s first openly gay chief of police, and he recalled the struggle of growing up in a time that did not celebrate queerness.
“There weren't classes, there weren't forums, there weren’t summits, there weren’t associations that spoke to sexuality. Matter of fact, we didn't say the word, ‘gay.’ We spelled it…” Scirotto lowered his voice to a whisper. “G-a-y…”
With no openly gay police role models growing up, he recalled walking onto the force worried about how his sexuality could impact his life and his career. Scirotto said when he became the chief of police, he hoped to give kids the representation he didn’t have when he was younger. He placed a strong emphasis on representation — on the importance of having someone with shared experiences in an individual’s desired career.
“When you talk about building a police department that honors dignity and respect for all of our officers and for all of our community members, we get away from words of tolerance. You know, that's just being able to keep your hand on a hot stove and get third degree burns before you pull it off. When we teach ‘tolerance,’ we teach acceptance and understanding for things and people that are different than us."
“We all have a responsibility and the ability to change the world, and we don't have to look at it so grand,” Scirotto added. “We don't have to look at it as so monumental, like climbing Mount Everest, because you can do it one person at a time.”
Following Scirotto’s speech, the summit offered a presentation on the history of gay rights, pride flags and gender identity. QMNTY Center outreach coordinator Andraya Rand-Mathis did a performance of vogue, a style of dance from the LGBTQ+ ballroom scene. One of the program's key sponsors, Hugh Lane Wellness Foundation, also offered a presentation.
The event concluded with a discussion panel of five drag entertainers, one of which, adorned in a curled hat and spiraling face paint, described themself as a “drag creature.”
The drag panel took questions from the audience and discussed their inspiration to start drag, what they hope to convey in doing so and their individual drag families. When the panel’s time was up, students rushed the drag quintet hoping for photos and extended conversations.
