‘Appalled’: Backlash over Sunnyvale school board candidate’s anti-LGBTQ views
By B. Sakura Cannestra,
3 hours ago
Sunnyvale residents are worried about a school board candidate who sent an email to a neighborhood association suggesting that LGBTQ people engage in public indecency.
Residents of North Sunnyvale have voiced concerns about Frances Renteria who is running for the Fremont Union High School District Trustee Area 2 seat. The residents pointed to Renteria’s signed pledge with Moms for Liberty — a conservative parent group that does not want critical race theory or LGBTQ history taught in school — and the email Renteria sent to the Lakewood Village Neighborhood Association in July which expressed anti-LGBTQ views.
Renteria said she was busy with work and declined to comment.
Sunnyvale residents said they’re worried about the Fremont Union High School District’s Trustee Area 2 elections because one candidate, Frances Renteria, has anti-LGBTQ views.
Renteria has also signed a pledge with the conservative parent group, saying she will “advance policies that strengthen parental involvement and decision-making” within government. The signed pledge is available on the Moms for Liberty Santa Clara County website, along with Renteria’s photo and campaign information.
San José Spotlight obtained a copy of the email sent from Renteria’s personal email address, where she suggested that including LGBTQ groups in the Lakewood Village Holiday parade would be a “degradation of our fine pure nostalgia.”
In her email, Renteria echoed homophobic claims that LGBTQ people are publicly indecent and dangerous.
“As it would be an Offensive and Repellent if you were to include LGBTQ groups,” the email reads. “I would not approve to have half naked adult men and groomers parade down the streets with their digits hanging, dangling in the wind.”
Courtney Jansen, the association’s vice president, said the email took her by surprise. The association had published a notice about the holiday parade in its July newsletter, which she said Renteria was responding to, but the notice did not mention LGBTQ groups.
She disavowed the email’s contents and said it would be disconcerting to have an individual with this point of view on the high school board, knowing she would make decisions that effect LGBTQ students.
Renteria’s opponent, Pat Carpio-Aguilar, teaches English and Spanish at Columbia Middle School and said she’s heard of Moms for Liberty mainly through their rebuffing of teachers unions. She said the notion that teachers are “indoctrinating” students is unfounded and that anti-LGBTQ rhetoric can hurt students, especially through board member actions.
“I’m doing this for my students, and now I feel there is a very big draw for me, that I have to protect these students,” Carpio-Aguilar told San José Spotlight. “These students are not just the LGBTQ community, it’s everybody who might have different perspectives, and now there’s somebody who could be on the dias who is designing policy that is not for them.”
Carl Kalauokalani, chair of Moms for Liberty Santa Clara County, said Renteria is a newer member of the chapter whom he met at a meeting that encourages people to run for school board. She joined the group after signing the pledge.
He added that the group supports “proper” education and parental rights, and that he didn’t know Renteria’s opinions on the LGBTQ community before supporting her. However, Kalauokalani said he agrees with them.
“If Frances has trouble supporting a person’s delusion with respect to their ability to change their gender, she is not alone,” Kalauokalani told San José Spotlight. “And the reason for this being important? Because truth continues to be important.”
Jansen said the board did not want to publicize the email when it was received in July because Renteria had not yet qualified for the ballot. After her campaign paperwork was approved, Jansen said the situation changed and she decided to make it public.
“She’s running to represent kids in my neighborhood, and kids in my neighborhood are already at a disadvantage ,” Jansen told San José Spotlight. “If we want all of our kids to be up for success, we need people supporting them who are actually up to support them.”
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