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Johnston County Schools just stepped into one of the loudest cultural fights in North Carolina education, but the real issue is not as complicated as politicians and activists want to make it.

The Johnston County school board voted 5-2 on July 14 to remove explicit references to sexual orientation and gender identity from its anti-bullying and equal employment policies. The district replaced those listed categories with a hyperlink to North Carolina’s school bullying statute. Johnston County is one of the largest school districts in the state, serving more than 37,000 students.

Supporters of the change argued that everyone will still be protected equally. Critics argued that removing the words sends a message that LGBTQ students and employees are less welcome.

That is where this debate gets important.

North Carolina law still specifically names sexual orientation and gender identity in its bullying statute. The law says bullying or harassing behavior includes acts reasonably perceived as being motivated by characteristics including race, religion, gender, physical appearance, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

So the words still exist in state law.

This was not really about whether LGBTQ students are protected under North Carolina’s bullying statute. They are. This was about whether Johnston County wanted those protections clearly visible in its own local policies.

That choice matters.

Equal Protection Is Not Special Treatment

A conservative argument was made at the meeting that if some groups are listed, then some people have “more rights” than others. That may sound fair at first, but it misunderstands what these policies are supposed to do.

Listing a category does not create a special class of children. It identifies common reasons children are targeted.

A student bullied for being gay does not get more rights than a student bullied for being Christian. A student harassed over gender identity does not get more rights than a student mocked for a disability. A Black student, a white student, a poor student, a straight student, a gay student, a Christian student, and an atheist student all deserve the same standard: come to school, learn, and do not be tormented.

That is not left-wing.

That is basic order.

That is also why the state statute lists examples. It does not say bullying is only illegal when the victim belongs to one of those categories. It says bullying includes, but is not limited to, conduct motivated by those kinds of characteristics.

North Carolina law also allows local school districts to adopt policies beyond the minimum requirements and more inclusive than state law. Johnston County did not have to erase the local wording to follow the statute.

It chose to.

A Hyperlink Is Not a Welcome Mat

The board’s new approach points people to the state law instead of spelling out the categories in district policy. Legally, that may preserve coverage. Politically and culturally, it sends a different message.

A hyperlink is not the same thing as a promise.

Parents do not always click through statutes. Students do not read legal cross-references when they are being bullied in the hallway. Teachers and staff should not have to decode a policy link to know what the district expects.

The school board could have added more categories. It could have updated the wording. It could have said, “All students are protected, including but not limited to these examples.” That would have strengthened the policy without making LGBTQ students feel like their names were intentionally removed.

Instead, the board made a symbolic deletion.

Symbols matter, especially in a school system where young people are watching how adults talk about them.

The Bathroom Debate Is Not the Bullying Debate

There is a real national debate happening over Title IX, bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s sports, parental rights, and biological sex. President Trump’s January 2025 executive order declared that the federal government recognizes two sexes, male and female, and directed federal agencies to interpret sex-based laws around that definition. North Carolina’s HB 805 also took effect on January 1, 2026, with the state officially recognizing only male and female sexes.

The Biden-era 2024 Title IX rule was also vacated by a federal court in January 2025, meaning that rule is not currently effective in any jurisdiction, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The Trump administration has also opened Title IX investigations into North Carolina districts over transgender restroom policies.

Those debates are real.

But they are not the same thing as an anti-bullying policy.

A school district can protect girls’ privacy, respect biological reality, support parental rights, keep classroom instruction age appropriate, and still tell gay students, lesbian students, bisexual students, transgender students, and questioning students that they are not fair game for harassment.

That should not be hard.

The Employment Side Matters Too

The board also removed references from equal employment language. For employees, that matters because the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock decision still stands. In 2020, the Court held that firing someone because of sexual orientation or transgender status violates Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination.

That does not settle every school-related question. It does not answer every religious liberty question. It does not end debates over bathrooms, sports, or compelled speech.

But it does mean LGBTQ employees are not outside the law just because a local policy stops naming them.

Removing the words does not remove the legal reality.

It removes clarity.

The Human Cost Cannot Be Ignored

Politics gets loud, but the students living through these debates are real.

The CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that the percentage of students bullied at school rose from 15 percent in 2021 to 19 percent in 2023, while the percentage who missed school because of safety concerns rose from 9 percent to 13 percent.

The Trevor Project’s 2024 national survey found that nearly half of LGBTQ young people ages 13 to 17 reported being bullied in person within the past year, and 35 percent reported being cyberbullied. LGBTQ youth who experienced bullying reported three times the rate of suicide attempts compared with those who were not bullied.

That does not mean every policy dispute should be decided by activist organizations. It does not mean conservatives have to accept every demand from the left. It does mean adults should stop pretending this issue is imaginary.

When a child is bullied because someone thinks he is gay, or because she does not fit stereotypes, or because another student thinks “different” means “target,” that is not politics.

That is a failure of discipline.

Words Matter, But Actions Matter More

Johnston County board members who supported the change said they still oppose bullying for any reason. Good. Hold them to that.

If the new policy truly protects everyone, then the district should prove it with enforcement, transparency, training, reporting, and real consequences for harassment.

If the removal of these words leads students, parents, or staff to believe LGBTQ people are less protected, then the district has created a problem it did not need to create.

You do not have to fly a Pride flag in every classroom to say a gay kid should not be bullied.

You do not have to adopt every demand of the activist left to say a school employee should not be harassed because of who they are.

You do not have to abandon conservatism to defend equal citizenship.

You simply have to mean it when you say “all.”

Liberty Does Not Erase People

The Go Right with Peter Boykin Perspective

Gays For Liberty exists because the left does not own gay Americans, and the right should not reject us.

We can be conservative. We can be Republican. We can believe in biology. We can support parental rights. We can oppose radical gender ideology being pushed on children. We can defend women’s spaces and fair sports.

And we can still say this clearly: gay students are not political punching bags.

Removing “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” from a local policy does not make those students disappear. It does not make the law disappear. It does not make the bullying disappear.

It only makes the promise less visible.

That is the problem.

The conservative answer should not be to hide words. The conservative answer should be to enforce one standard for everyone.

No bullying. No harassment. No retaliation. No special rights. No second-class citizens.

If a student is bullied for being gay, stop it. If a student is bullied for being Christian, stop it. If a student is bullied for being disabled, stop it. If a student is bullied for being poor, stop it. If a student is bullied because another child thinks they are different, stop it.

That is not woke.

That is order.

That is decency.

That is liberty.

And yes, that is what equal protection should look like in a constitutional republic.

Johnston County Schools removed sexual orientation and gender identity from local anti-bullying and employment policies, but North Carolina law still names those categories. The real question is whether equal protection should be visible, clear, and enforced for every student.

#GoRightNews #GaysForLiberty #JohnstonCounty #NCPolitics #Education #LGBTQ #EqualProtection #ParentalRights #ConstitutionalistForLiberty #PeterBoykin

Sources:
Raleigh News & Observer reporting on Johnston County’s July 14, 2026, school board vote.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article316502159.html

North Carolina General Statutes, Article 29C, School Violence Prevention.
https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/ByArticle/Chapter_115c/Article_29C.html

Johnston County Public Schools Title IX and discrimination policy page.
https://www.johnston.k12.nc.us/page/title-ix

U.S. Department of Education Title IX overview.
https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/civil-rights-laws/title-ix-and-sex-discrimination/sex-discrimination-overview-of-law

White House executive order on biological sex policy, January 20, 2025.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

ABC11 reporting on North Carolina HB 805 taking effect January 1, 2026.
https://abc11.com/post/nc-gender-identity-law-male-female-genders-recognized-north-carolina-new-hb-805-effect-jan-1-2026/18337300/

CDC 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey results.
https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/results/2023-yrbs-results.html

The Trevor Project 2024 National Survey on LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2024/

Bostock v. Clayton County summary of Title VII employment protections.
https://nps.edu/web/eeo/sexual-orientation-discrimination