Transcript
Grapevine
Episode 3: A Harvest Is Coming
Amid a growing anti-trans backlash, Ren devises a plan to get out of Texas — and away from her mother. In Grapevine, Sharla’s claim that teacher Em Ramser “infected” her child with lies about gender triggers online attacks, leading Ramser to consider leaving the profession.
REN: “Hello to anyone that sees this message. As I speak on this day, Thursday, February 24th –”
ANTONIA HYLTON: In early 2022, one year after attempting to run away, and six months before her mother Sharla spoke at a Grapevine school board meeting, Ren typed out a note to herself on her phone. She read it for us.
REN: “I sit comfortably as I write this. I, however, am in more immediate danger to both my own mental health and my family’s.”
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ren, now a 15-year-old sophomore at the ASPIRE Academy for gifted students at Grapevine High was distraught. Texas Governor Greg Abbott had just issued a letter directing the state’s child welfare agency to begin investigating parents seeking gender-affirming medical care for their transgender children. It classified care like hormones and puberty blockers as child abuse and called on professionals and members of the public to report families they suspected of seeking these treatments.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But the state crackdown wasn’t Ren’s biggest fear. Things had gotten worse between her and her mother in the year since she tried to run away.
REN: “On top of the illegalization of trans healthcare, I live in a reality where it would not be possible to attain due to my mother’s hatred for people she has referred to as ‘trannies.’”
ANTONIA HYLTON: That winter, Sharla had found girl’s clothing in Ren’s bedroom. They got into a fight over it. For Ren, it felt like her world was shrinking.
REN: “Living life as a boy has taken a noticeable toll on my mental health. Recently, I have reached a point in which I can no longer take this. In the summer following this school year, I will be attempting to go to court to transfer primary custody to my father. I will be –”
ANTONIA HYLTON: After composing the note, Ren thought about posting it somewhere or sending it to her friends. In the end, she sent it to only one person: her dad, Rich.
RICH: And so, she shared that e-mail with me, and it was really a poignant view inside of her. And you could -- you could read the fear of the situation that she was in.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The message helped Rich to understand the depths of his child’s despair. Even more than her runaway attempt a year earlier, they’d long talked about the possibility of Ren leaving Texas and coming to live with him in Oregon once she finished high school. Now, Rich realized, this couldn’t wait another two years.
RICH: Sharla was getting more and more militant. And she wrote e-mails to me saying, “it’s your job to make Ren a man.” And that -- that kind of statement, you know, frightened me.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Rich had also been watching the Grapevine school board election that spring and was disturbed when candidates backed by the Christian cell phone company, Patriot Mobile, swept to power.
RICH: The situation just -- it -- it devolved to this point where I felt the only way to be safe was to get her out of the -- the society, the state, and the school district.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Once she turned 16 later that spring, Ren would have the legal power to petition the court in Oregon for a change in custody.
RICH: And so, when she came up for the visit in February, um, we went and visited an attorney, and that’s kind of what started the process.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Rich hired two attorneys: one to represent him, and one to represent Ren. They told Sharla nothing of their plans that spring. When his daughter arrived in Oregon for summer vacation at the end of the 2022 school year, Rich filed paperwork, petitioning the court for full custody. Sharla hired a lawyer of her own and promised to fight. But after the Oregon judge overseeing the case, directed Sharla and her lawyer to refer to Ren only by her chosen name and female pronouns during court proceedings, it seemed clear that the judge was likely to side with Rich, the parent already affirming Ren’s gender identity. Rich says his lawyers drafted up a consent decree that would grant him sole legal custody. Under the terms, Sharla would only be allowed to have contact with her child if and when Ren agreed to it.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In a social media post later, Sharla said she felt she had no choice but to sign the agreement. Writing, quote, “I was forced to call my son she/her and sign a supplemental judgment.” Sharla said that she and the rest of Ren’s Texas family were devastated. But before signing, Sharla first wanted to hear directly from her child. In June, she traveled to Oregon to meet with Ren in person. Ren said the meeting in her bedroom was awkward.
REN: It was like a repeat of all the things that she’d been telling me for years about, like, God. And it was hard. I didn’t say all the things that I really wanted to because it was just hard talking to her still. I don’t know, I feel like I just wish that there was something I could have said to, I don’t know, change her mind or change things between us. But part of the problem was that no matter what I said, she never really listened to anything. I wish that there was some combination of words in the English language I could find that could make her change her mind about anything, but just doesn’t exist.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Sharla went home to Texas without Ren and signed the papers soon after. That’s what she meant later that summer, when she stood up at that Grapevine school board meeting and declared, “I lost my son.” Two days after that board meeting, Sharla described her last meeting with Ren in a social media post, writing that she found her child cold and hostile. In what might have been her final encounter with her only child whom she long called her miracle. Sharla said she told Ren, she was making a mistake, writing, quote, “I told him he has made a tough decision, and he will have to pay the consequences. When he finds out the truth, he is always welcome home. Until then,” she added, “this mama’s arms are open wide.”
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: From the NBC News team that brought you Southlake, I’m Mike Hixenbaugh.
ANTONIA HYLTON: I’m Antonia Hylton.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And this is Grapevine.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Episode 3. A Harvest is Coming.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The anti-trans backlash movement that was about to sweep up Sharla and Ren and Ren’s old English teacher, Em Ramser, had been building for years on the American right. It first reared its head nationally in 2016 and ‘17 with the initial attempts by some Republican-controlled state legislatures to restrict which bathrooms trans people could use. Back then, those measures were widely condemned by celebrities and pro sports leagues and dozens of major corporations like Wells Fargo and American Airlines, and eventually defeated. There didn’t seem to be much appetite for harsh policies targeting such a small and vulnerable minority, representing less than two percent of the population. In fact, many local school districts, including some in Texas, were instead moving in the opposite direction. They adopted curricula, anti-bullying rules, and bathroom policies meant to make transgender students feel safe being their authentic selves at school. But something had changed by 2022. Opposition to transgender acceptance had grown and was fast becoming a central pillar of the GOP platform. And it was about to escalate well beyond bathroom politics and pronoun jokes.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Some of the credit for that shift has to go to outspoken, conservative influencers and activists like Chris Rufo. He’d helped make CRT a household phrase in 2020 by bringing his message to the then-king of cable news, Tucker Carlson.
CHRIS RUFO: Thank you so much. You know, Tucker, it’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government. Conservatives need to wake up that this is an existential --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Two years later, Rufo was back on Carlson’s Fox News show, this time to sound an alarm about gender issues in schools.
CHRIS RUFO: So, what’s happening is that public school bureaucrats across the country have taken the principles of academic queer theory, and then turned them into a K-12 pedagogy. They’re training kids as young as kindergarten to experiment with sexual identities, uh, such as trans, gender queer, pansexual, gender fluid, two-spirit. All of these, uh, really crazy and synthetic, uh, uh, construction --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The school training documents Rufo shared that July on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” said nothing about encouraging kids to experiment with different genders, but instead advised teachers to ask students what pronouns they wanted to use in class. And it included a glossary of some of those terms, like pansexual, gender fluid, two spirit, to help educators understand and support children of various gender expressions. Nevertheless, Carlson reacted with predictable outrage. He suggested that teachers who talk to children about these issues should face prison time or expect violence.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, up until recently, the rule was, you troll my minor children about their sex life and you’re going to get hurt. And I think that should be the rule still. I think this is that --
ANTONIA HYLTON: One politician, perhaps more than any other, picked up Rufo’s argument and ran with it.
RON DESANTIS: In the State of Florida, a parent should be able to send their kid to kindergarten without having woke gender ideology shoved down their throat. (CHEERING) (APPLAUSE)
ANTONIA HYLTON: Speaking at the Moms for Liberty national conference in July 2022, the same summer Ren asked a judge for permission to leave Grapevine, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis talked up his state’s efforts to crack down on teachers discussing gender.
GOVERNOR RON DESANTIS: We’re not going to have some first grader be told that, you know, yeah, your parents named you Johnny, you were born a boy, but maybe you’re really a girl. That is inappropriate to be doing, uh, in school. And we’re not going to allow that to happen in Florida.
ANTONIA HYLTON: DeSantis never produced evidence of teachers actually directing children to change their genders. The main example he cited in speeches involved educators honoring the wishes of a middle schooler, who’d asked to be called by a different name and pronouns. In that case, the teen’s parents later accused school officials of speaking to the student about their gender identity without parental consent, which the district denied. It was an example of a real debate vexing educators nationally. How should schools accommodate transgender and non-binary students when those children’s parents aren’t fully supportive?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But rather than confront that messy, ethical dilemma, Rufo and DeSantis seemed to make a caricature of it by painting any educators who tried to honor the wishes of trans students as ideologues, wanting to turn children queer. It was the same allegation that Sharla was about to level against Ren’s former teacher, Em Ramser, that August. We wanted to understand what led Sharla to go public with that story. And after months of trying and failing to reach her, we decided to go ask in person.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Straight ahead. Car -- two cars are home.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: All right.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Sharla lives in a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood near the border between Grapevine and Southlake. By the time we pulled up, Mike had sent her several e-mails, texts, and voice messages with no response. We weren’t entirely sure that she had seen them.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Hi, Sharla?
SHARLA: Yes.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: My name’s Mike Hixenbaugh. I’ve been trying to -- to reach you. And this is Antonia Hylton.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Hi, nice to meet you.
SHARLA: Hi, how are you?
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Good.
SHARLA: I’m not going to open the door. I don’t want --
ANTONIA HYLTON: Sharla kept her storm door closed, worried that if she opened it, her dogs would run out. She listened through the glass and nodded as Mike explained that we were working on a series about the school board fights in Grapevine and Colleyville. And we were aware of her concerns about the school district and her child.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And we -- we’ve also spoken with, uh, your ex-husband and with your child, and have, you know, spent some time understanding their perspective on the school system and -- and all that went down. Um, and so, anyway, we’re -- we’re just really interested in hearing your perspective and -- anyway, I just wanted to -- we wanted to tell you that in person and to see if you’d be open to sharing with us.
SHARLA: Okay. Well, thank you, but not at this time.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Okay. So, you -- you did get my message. Do you have my phone number?
SHARLA: Uh, yes, I do.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Okay. We’re going to be in town through Monday. If you change your mind between now and then, we will --
SHARLA: Okay.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: -- change our plans and come see you?
SHARLA: I appreciate it.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Right on. Okay. Thank you.
SHARLA: All right. Thank you.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Although she didn’t want to sit down with us, much of Sharla’s story was already out in public view. It was in her Facebook post, and she told it to a crowd of her neighbors at that school board meeting. And by the fall of 2022, her public statements, her side of the story, were beginning to have a real impact on Ren’s old school and its teachers.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Em Ramser first saw the video of Sharla’s school board comments on Twitter the morning after the meeting. A friend texted a link, and she pulled it up on her phone.
SHARLA: Certain staff were labeling him, feeding him incorrect information, especially about his unaccepting mom. They gave him and other students unsolicited harmful information from their personal libraries. In doing so, they exploited my son’s gender dysphoria.
BOARD CLERK: Thank you.
SHARLA: I lost my son.
BOARD CLERK: Thank you.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: At first, Ramser didn’t think too much of the clip.
EM RAMSER: To be honest, I didn’t even realize who that parent was or that I knew that parent. It didn’t click in my brain. I didn’t recognize her face at first because it had been over a year since I’d spoken to her.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Once she realized this was the mom who’d complained about “The Prince and the Dressmaker,” and that she was likely talking about her, the 27-year-old teacher was dumbfounded.
EM RAMSER: I had no idea that there was anything going on between Ren and her mom. Like I did -- I had nothing, no concept, no thought. I never spoke about Mom. I never told Mom what -- you know, said that Mom would be unaccepting because I am like always going to recommend of, like, try to work things out with your parents, with your friends, whoever else, like talk about stuff.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Did you ever talk to run about her mom? Give her advice about how to communicate with her mom?
EM RAMSER: Not that I remember. I had a hard enough time talking to Ren about what we needed to do in class that day.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Did you ever criticize her mom in front of her?
EM RAMSER: No. I don’t remember ever doing that.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The district had already investigated and dismissed Sharla’s claims more than a year earlier. Ramser figured this would blow over, too, but Sharla didn’t stop with the school board. A few days later, Ramser was greeting students in the hallway.
EM RAMSER: And another teacher came up and was, like, “are you OK?” And I’m like, “yeah, I’m fine.” And she was like, “well, about the article.” And I’m like, “what -- what article are you talking about?” And she showed me --
ANTONIA HYLTON: In bold letters, the headline read, “Bombshell Claims of GCISD Teacher Misconduct.” It was about Ramser.
EM RAMSER: I broke down crying in the hallway. And I think it was -- it was, uh, tears not out of sadness, not out of being mad, just terrified.
ANTONIA HYLTON: 00:16:32 Just weeks after Sharla said goodbye to Ren in Oregon, and only a few days after airing her grievances at the school board meeting, her story was published in the Dallas Express. The Express was once a historic, Black-owned publication, famous for its aggressive coverage of racism and segregation. The paper shuttered in the 70s but relaunched as a website under new ownership in 2021. Today, The Express presents itself as a nonpartisan local newspaper, but it’s filled with headlines and articles promoting signature Republican causes. It’s published by Monty Bennett, a Trump-supporting Dallas hotel magnate, who’d taken an interest in Grapevine school board politics. Bennett had donated money to Patriot Mobile-backed candidates and given them space in The Express to write op-eds about critical race theory and the dangers of library books in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district. Now, Bennett’s paper was going after Ramser.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The article was based on an interview with Sharla and an e-mail obtained by The Express that Sharla had written to Grapevine High’s principal, Alex Fingers, that summer. In her e-mail, Sharla told Fingers that Ramser had, quote, “infected” her child with a dangerous ideology, and encouraged Ren to change genders. Sharla also alleged that Ramser had a personal library of LGBTQ books, including “The Prince and the Dressmaker,” that she passed around to indoctrinate students. Ramser had an inkling something like this might be coming. The Dallas Express reporter had e-mailed her weeks earlier to let her know that he was working on a story about her and to ask her to comment. The note was light on details, and Ramser says her bosses told her to ignore it. She hoped the story would go away, but it hadn’t.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The Dallas Express article linked to Ramser’s social media and personal website where she’d identified as a queer educator. The piece also included a statement from a Grapevine-Colleyville spokesperson. It said, quote, “the district takes all parent concerns seriously, and works with all involved to take any necessary steps to best serve our students and families.” The statement made no mention of the fact that the district had previously investigated Sharla’s claims and cleared Ramser. As she scrolled the article, Ramser’s head was spinning.
EM RAMSER: It felt like being, like, plunged into an ice bath, and like, you can’t catch your breath. And all of a sudden, it’s like everything around you is, like, gone sideways. And it’s, like, your worst kind of nightmare of when you’re any kind of an LGBTQ teacher, somebody has finally said that there’s something wrong with who you are or what you’re doing. And I was, like, terrified of what that meant for me in my own personal safety.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Someone offered to watch Ramser’s class, and she headed to Principal Fingers’ office.
EM RAMSER: 00:19:18 And the first words out of my mouth were, “I’m going to quit.” And they’re like, “no, no, don’t do that. Like, that’s what they want. It’s going to be OK.” Da, da, da. And nobody else was nearly as concerned about it as I was at the time.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser says Fingers told her to make a lesson plan for a substitute, and head home for the rest of the day.
EM RAMSER: And so, I sat in a little like workroom, did my sub plans, and then just -- honestly, like, I drove to my mom’s house and just cried.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Four days afterward, Ramser stayed at home while a substitute ran her classes.
EM RAMSERAnd I was, like, trying to set up plans of, do I have enough money in my account to like stop work? Can I -- can I just not go back? Because I was also scared to go back in the doors. Like there were comments on the articles that were going on and on and on, and like saying that, you know, “this teacher should get monkeypox or -- and die,” and that you should never be around kids again, and that you should be arrested, have your license stripped.
ANTONIA HYLTON: All year, Ramser had seen news coverage of right-wing militias, including the Proud Boys, protesting with AR-15s outside of family friendly drag performances, including in Dallas. She was worried that someone like that might show up at her house.
EM RAMSER: 00:20:30 And then at the same point, somebody found and posted my personal e-mail address in one of those. And I got signed up for all of these spam pornographic websites. And so, I started getting all of these things of like, oh, here’s this porn link and this porn link, and this porn link. And I got an e-mail to my work account that was like -- said something, “what gives you the right to indoctrinate the children?” Um, and I was just, like, a mess. Like, absolutely not okay, crying, like, didn’t want to get up. Um, so, it was just, like, it was a heartbreaking time for, like, everybody in my life, and it was just hard.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: 00:21:15 But for Ramser, the nasty e-mails and personal attacks, wouldn’t even be the hardest part of this ordeal. As she sat at home, she kept waiting for school district leaders to speak up. They were the ones who’d fought to hire her two years earlier. But now, a new school board was in charge in Grapevine-Colleyville, and it soon became clear to Ramser that she would have to fight this battle alone.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Three days after the Dallas Express story, Grapevine High’s principal, Alex Fingers, called Em Ramser at home to check in on her. A colleague had advised Ramser to document every interaction with school leaders going forward as a way of protecting herself in case the district decided to punish her in the future. So, when Fingers called, she hit record without telling him. She later shared the file with us.
ALEX FINGERS: I’ve gotten through most of it now. And, uh, uh, I’m on -- I’m on the second -- uh, I guess, first page of --
ANTONIA HYLTON: Principal Fingers opens by acknowledging that having gone line by line through the Dallas Express article, he’s concluded that Sharla’s claims about her were false.
ALEX FINGERS: So I want you to know I don’t want you to be thinking that there’s this pervasive, um, uh, cloud over your head saying “Em is bad, Em is bad, get rid of Em” because that’s -- that’s -- that’s definitely not the case.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: He tells her he doesn’t think she’s bad. In fact, as his inbox piles up with outraged parent e-mails. He’s been replying to them with praise for her.
ALEX FINGERS: She is an amazing teacher. She is -- you know, she does go above and beyond to create, um, experience for her students. And we are fortunate having her and et cetera, et cetera. So, um --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser tells the principal about the angry messages she’s been getting, including some calling for her to be arrested. She tells him she’s worried about her physical safety.
EM RAMSER: So, and that -- that is in just a large part of what we are seeing within the LGBTQ community of when something like this goes up, there are significant safety concerns for that person involved because it has become such a thing of saying that, you know, LGBTQ people are sexualizing children, which is, uh, a lie, but whatever. Um --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser tells him, the online comments are really getting to her.
ALEX FINGERS: So, what you’re going to -- what you’re going to realize about people, if you haven’t already, is that they don’t all love people. No one cared to know the truth because you are -- you are trying to be sane in a -- in a -- in a group that are not -- just an insane group. Sanity is the enemy of insanity.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Fingers says he wants to come up with a plan for helping Ramser get through this. And he gives her some advice on how to avoid being targeted in the future. Fingers, who is Black, says he doesn’t display any symbols at school that might signal anything about his personal beliefs.
ALEX FINGERS: I don’t have a Black Lives Matter poster. I don’t have a -- a GSA, uh, flag. I don’t have -- um, I don’t have, uh, anything. I’m not, uh, giving any -- any -- any extra ammunition. Because I love all kids, and I don’t have any symbols or signs or anything. I don’t --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: And neither should Ramser, he says. He mentions the rainbow pride stickers by her name outside her classroom. Some students had given them to her, and she’d put them up as a way of communicating that everyone is welcome in her class.
EM RAMSER: So, like, do I need to remove the stickers off my name plate?
ALEX FINGERS: I would.
EM RAMSER: Okay.
ALEX FINGERS: I would just for the simple fact that what if someone puts a Satanist sticker up there?
EM RAMSER: Well, yes. Alex, I don’t let the kids put the stickers up there. I put them up there. And the only thing --
ALEX FINGERS: Okay.
EM RAMSER: Yeah, like I wouldn’t put it up -- Yeah. Okay. But I’ll -- I’ll pull them down.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Yes, I would just do it just to -- to avoid. I mean, what we’re trying to do now is identify what all other lies and have on our end everything that we’ve done to say, no, this is not -- we’re above ground. Look at the --
ANTONIA HYLTON: If it sounds like Fingers is being extra cautious, it’s important to consider another controversy that had landed Grapevine-Colleyville in the news recently. The previous school year, the district had suspended James Whitfield, the first Black principal at GCISD’s other high school, after parents and activists accused Whitfield of indoctrinating kids with critical race theory. Whitfield denied the allegations, and the school agreed that he never taught or pushed critical race theory. But after a highly publicized feud with the school board, he agreed to settle with the district and resigned. Fingers tells Ramser he’s had his own run-ins with angry parents, and he doesn’t want to give them any openings to attack.
ALEX FINGERS: Uh, because somebody who’s, you know, bringing an agenda, all these different things, and you know, disparaging my character and my ability to lead, and my -- my disrespect and hate for the country, et cetera, it sucks. It’s not -- uh, it’s not fair.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser tells Fingers what would really help, more than removing stickers from her classroom, would be if the district would say publicly what administrators have told her privately: that she’s done nothing wrong, that she’s an excellent teacher, and that Sharla’s allegations are false.
EM RAMSER: And I’ll be honest with you, Alex, as I know a bunch of other teachers right now who are scared shitless that they’re going to be the next one who ends up in one of these things and has their whole life turned upside down. Like I -- I don’t have a good answer of what to do beyond the district acknowledging that there was, like, an investigation or whatever done, that I was found of no wrongdoing. Like I --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Fingers agrees that’s a good idea.
ALEX FINGERS: You received no discipline -- you’ve not received one disciplinary action from me.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: But any decision on going public with that message, he says, will be up to the administrators above him at the superintendent level and with the school board.
ALEX FINGERS: I doubt that you’d get something that’ll say exactly what you would like. Uh, maybe you’ll get a response that -- or-- or I will get a response because I don’t --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: He ends the call without committing to anything.
EM RAMSER: Have a great rest of your day.
ALEX FINGERS: You too.
EM RAMSER: Okay, bye-bye.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Despite Ramser’s request, which she also made directly to members of the school board, the district never released a statement publicly defending her or acknowledging that she’d been cleared of wrongdoing. We reached out to Principal Fingers and other administrators, but they declined to be interviewed. Our initial email to the school district requesting interviews was screenshotted and appeared eight days later on a local conservative blog. In a written response to questions about the district’s handling of Ramser’s situation, a Grapevine-Colleyville spokesperson said the district does not share findings of personnel investigations, adding, quote, “the district has always remained committed to serving and supporting all students, families, and staff, and ensuring that they feel safe and welcome.”
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser says senior district administrators, the people above Fingers, ignored her pleas for help.
EM RAMSER: To this day, nobody in that administration has acknowledged that I did nothing wrong. They have not done any public acknowledgement. Nobody even reached out to be, like, “hey, are you okay?” Because they don’t care.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser figured this was the new school board’s promise coming true. They were starting to get rid of the people on that list of poison teachers that Patriot Mobile-backed board member Tammy Nakamura had talked about. And this is how they were going to do it: starting with her.
EM RAMSER: I don’t fit the teacher that they want. Regardless of all the success I bring their district, they do not want my name or face associated with it. I was to the point where I’m like, I didn’t know what I was going to -- I was going to use all of my -- all of my days to just try to, like, find a new job or, like, figure out, can I quit?
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser’s mom saw the toll it was taking on her daughter. She checked in on her almost every day during the week she was home from school. As a lesbian herself, who’d come of age in another era of open hostility against gay people, she wasn’t surprised by the school district’s silence. One night, she shocked Ramser by admitting that she was mentally preparing for the worst.
EM RAMSER: She’s like, “if you kill yourself, I’m going to -- sue that school district.” Because my mom was -- my mom was like prepared for that in some weird sick way. And she was also scared. She’s like, “if one of those, you know, people come after you and kill you, I’m going to sue that school district.” There’s nothing like having your mom be, like, prepared for that.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ramser came close that week to following through on her initial plan to leave Grapevine. But then she saw a note from a parent in her inbox. They had copied her on outreach to the school. Their child was distraught over Ramser’s absence, and worried that she’d been fired over the article, which had spread like wildfire around the high school.
EM RAMSER: And I was like, okay, I can’t -- like, I got to figure it out for now. I can’t just keep hiding in my house. But it was only because I was worried about the kids that I went back because I also, at some level, I teach -- when -- when you teach writing, you teach kids how to have a voice, and you teach them to use their voice, and you teach them to be proud of their writing and proud of themselves. Because the only way you can, like, be proud of your writing is if you -- you’re somewhere proud of yourself. Right? And I didn’t want to show them that when things are hard, you hide. Because even if I am not -- you know, I’m not meaning to indoctrinate any kid to doing anything, but some of them are going to look to you and model your actions or they’re going to look to you and try to follow, you know, are you as a role model or whatever else. It just happens.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Ramser understood that she’d become entangled in something bigger than herself. She’d studied the history of anti-LGBTQ bigotry in America. She’d seen the old film reels from the 1970s when activist moms marched under the slogan “Save our children” in an effort to drive gay teachers out of classrooms. Now, it seemed like that history was repeating. But she didn’t want her kids to see her buckle under the pressure.
EM RAMSER: If a kid is looking at me as a role model or looking at me to follow in whatever I’m doing, then I want to show them that the way to act is not to hide. It’s not to let these people destroy your life. It’s not to cow over and let them walk all over you. But instead, you stand up for who you are and what you believe in because who you are matters. And it -- it -- it’s important to still be yourself and be proud of who you are.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: In the months after Sharla went public with her allegations against Em Ramser, Republican leaders were escalating their attacks on transgender inclusion and acceptance. In March of 2023, activists and GOP politicians gathered once again for the Conservative Political Action Conference.
MICHAEL KNOWLES: Its acceptance at any level necessarily entails the complete destruction of women’s bathrooms, women’s sports, all the specific rights --
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Michael Knowles, a political commentator for the far-right news site, The Daily Wire, spoke from the CPAC main stage, standing under a massive banner that read, “Protecting America Now.” Knowles told the crowd it wasn’t enough to simply crack down on kids’ pronouns or just ban hormone treatments for teenagers.
MICHAEL KNOWLES: If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really can’t become women, as they cannot, then it’s false for everybody, too. If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology, at every level. (APPLAUSE)
ANTONIA HYLTON: Just a few weeks later, a mass shooting in Tennessee poured fuel on the flames and helped connect the building anti-trans backlash movement to the campaign to impose Christian values in government and education. A shooter identified by police as transgender, killed six people at a private Christian school in Nashville. Afterward, some conservatives rushed to blame the massacre on the suspect’s gender identity. The hashtag #transterrorism trended on Twitter, as far-right influencers baselessly warned of a, quote, “epidemic of trans non-binary mass shooters.” And some Christian leaders pointed to the Covenant school shooting as proof that there was a battle brewing between good and evil.
SEAN FEUCHT: I don’t care what the media says. I don’t care what politicians say. This was a specific attack on Christians.
ANTONIA HYLTON: At a Nashville prayer rally a few days later, I was in the crowd as a Christian nationalist worship leader named Sean Feucht called on evangelical believers to rise up. He warned that Satan was now using LGBTQ people to physically attack believers. But, Feucht told the crowd, there was also good news.
SEAN FEUCHT: That there is a harvest coming. Come on, somebody believe with me. There is a harvest coming with those that battle with sexual identity issues. We thank you, Jesus, that you’re going to bring salvation, that you’re going to bring deliverance, and that you’re going to bring healing. (CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) How many believe that?
ANTONIA HYLTON: “There’s a harvest coming.” In Feucht’s vision, transgender people were weapons of the enemy. But soon, God would save them from their sins.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: At another church-based political rally that same day, this one in North Texas, Rafael Cruz, the Patriot Mobile spiritual advisor, again, turned the focus of this national struggle onto local school boards, and managed to crank up the volume on the anti-trans scare campaign even higher.
RAFAEL CRUZ: Let me tell you, we are in a battle for the future of our children and our children’s children. Where now they are saying, actually, God made a mistake. You’re not really a girl, you’re a boy. Or, you’re not really a boy, you’re a girl. And that is actually an affront against God. And so, now, we are seeing children being mutilated in our public schools.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: To be clear, children were not being mutilated. And setting his incendiary description of trans medical care aside, schools did not and could not provide hormones, surgery, or any kind of gender affirming treatments. But Cruz painted a disturbing picture of innocent kids becoming confused and preyed upon in school classrooms, of a nation that had lost its way.
RAFAEL CRUZ: There is an evil agenda. There is a -- a socialist agenda to destroy our foundations. We are the only thing that stands between the destruction of America or the revival of America.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: The way Cruz saw it, Christians like them needed to take control of these schools, and to do what the commentator Michael Knowles said: eradicate transgenderism from public life entirely.
ANTONIA HYLTON: The story Republican politicians were telling about transgender youth in the spring of 2023 didn’t match Ren’s experience. When we went to see her in Oregon that April, she told us she started identifying as female because that’s who she is. It wasn’t because of a library book or a secret agenda by her teachers. Back in Texas, before she asked the judge to give her dad custody, school was the one place she’d felt free to be herself.
REN: Because I had good, supportive friends, and I had teachers. And I wasn’t that out still because there was still the risk of, like, my mom knowing, and all that. Uh, but I just felt like I could exist more at school.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ren was still getting used to life away from Grapevine and away from her mother. She wore dresses to class at her new school and felt no pressure to keep those garments hidden when she was at home. Under her father’s supervision at age 16, she’d started receiving puberty blockers and estrogen to aid in her physical transition -- care that was now being outlawed in many other states. She was also watching with growing concern as her mother took their private dispute public. Ren saw her mom’s school board speech and read some of her public posts about her views on transgender people.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: She’s now turned it into kind of a public activism. What do you think about that?
REN: I -- I hate it. But what am I going to do about it? I can feel bad about it. That’s pretty much it. That’s what I’ve been doing.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ren was shocked and upset when she’d learned that her mother was blaming what happened between them on Ms. Ramser.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: She didn’t tell you to run away?
REN: No. No, of course not.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: You didn’t get the idea to run away from reading a graphic novel?
REN: No, it sounds very simple when you put it like that. Probably because it is but --
ANTONIA HYLTON: When Rich learned what Sharla had been up to, he was upset.
RICH: I don’t believe deep down that she wants to hurt Ren, but that said, the damage is still there.
ANTONIA HYLTON: After the August of 2022 school board meeting and Dallas Express article, he’d sent his own letter to Grapevine High’s principal Alex Fingers to correct the record as he saw it, and to defend both Ramser and another Grapevine educator Sharla had accused of manipulating Ren. The other educator, a counselor, was never named publicly. Sharla had alleged the counselor spent time giving Ren gender-affirming care in her office. On his recorded call with Ramser, Fingers called that claim, quote, “totally false.”
RICH: To turn around and blame two of the best teachers that Ren had in that school district, and that supported her, and gave her shelter, and maybe sometimes gave her a reason to live… The teachers were there in support of that child, not to try to sell any agenda. And it’s turned -- it’s turned the truth upside down the -- what she -- the story she told is absolutely the truth upside down.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Sharla’s comments to the board and the Dallas Express were not the end of her campaign to expose the people she believed had brainwashed her child. After the board meeting, she created a Facebook page titled “Woke Momma Bear: Gender Truth God’s Way” and filled the feed with photos of her newly estranged child, back before Ren openly identified as a girl. Sharla also posted links to a blog warning that cultural shifts in America signaled the coming end times, along with select Bible verses.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: “God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Later, she launched a YouTube channel and recorded a video of herself, alerting parents to the toxic ideology that she believed was poisoning children’s minds and destroying families.
SHARLA: Dear parents, my son recently left GCISD. He’s gone to live with his father in Oregon and become a girl. Most kids just embrace the tomboy phase or the dress up phase, and it never occurs to them to take it any further than that. Until now, until woke, until gender dysphoria meant that drugs would chemically castrate my son before he ever had surgery.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: On the screen, the word “woke” flashes in all caps in bright white text against a black background. A pair of menacing eyes appears from the shadows.
SHARLA: Pre-teens are highly impressionable to trendy fads that give them attention. I watched it happen to my son. Let me be clear: transgender people exist, and they should be respected and loved like any other human beings. But nowadays, I think most transgender people are made, not born. They are made by woke. If we don’t fight this now, we’ll have a whole generation of lost children who make decisions they regret. This momma is awake, and I am in this fight for the long haul to protect our kids. Fight woke while you still can.
RICH: Yes. I hadn’t seen that video before.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: Rich looked exhausted and heartbroken as he stared at my phone screen.
RICH: I don’t even know where to start. She -- she recognizes there is such a thing as a transgender child, but I -- but she doesn’t recognize that her own child is transgender. And I don’t know, like, how can she tell the difference? How can you recognize that there are non-binary gender identifications and yet say that the kids that identify non-binary are all just following a fad? You know, it’s not a fad. It’s -- it’s absolutely, you know, genetics. And it’s -- when a child hears her mother or father say, “I don’t accept you for who you are,” that’s what makes kids think about killing themselves.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Rich had seen the Facebook post in which Sharla described her final meeting with Ren, including a line where she said her childhood, quote, “disappeared,” just like in the Old Testament story of Jacob.
RICH: I don’t even know where that comes from. Um, I -- I know the story of Jacob, and I don’t remember the disappearance. But what I do remember is -- is the story that the son that disappears that’s welcomed back home. And in this case, the son is even somebody that did something wrong. I’m sorry. And in -- in that case, a story told by Jesus, was a son that actually did something wrong, and yet is welcomed back home. And here, we have a daughter that’s done absolutely nothing wrong, and isn’t welcomed by her own mother. That’s all I can say about that. Give me a second, guys. I’m so sorry.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: It’s not totally clear whether Ren was or wasn’t welcome at her mother’s home. Under the court agreement, it was up to Ren if she wanted to plan a visit to Grapevine. But in the months since their legal separation, Ren hadn’t wanted to talk to her mom. Either way, the way Rich sees it, his ex-wife has given no indication that she’s ready to welcome their child home as her true self. As a daughter.
ANTONIA HYLTON: Ren’s stepmother, Grace, sat with Rich and Ren throughout our visit, listening to them process the last several years. At times, it looked like she was struggling to contain her rage. When she heard us discussing the role of Christianity and the Seven Mountains Mandate, and its connection to school board politics in Grapevine, something seemed to click in her mind.
GRACE: It answers the question that I’ve had for a very long time. Like, what is the motivating factor? If they see this as a holy war, if they see this as the only chance they have to reestablish power and dominion over everything, and if they see this as, you know, a holy war, that’s going to usher in Jesus Christ again, then all bets are off. And I think that’s the message that I’m hoping that the media can give much more voice to, is explaining to the American public that we are, in fact, in a holy war. And if you’re not an evangelical Christian, cis, white male, you’re a target.
MIKE HIXENBAUGH: That’s next on Grapevine. From NBC News Studios, this is the third of six episodes of Grapevine, a series about faith, power, and what it means to protect children in an American suburb. Grapevine was written, reported, and hosted by me, Mike Hixenbaugh.
ANTONIA HYLTON: And by me, Antonia Hylton. This series is produced by Frannie Kelley. Our senior editor is Julie Shapiro, with story editing by Michelle Garcia. We had production support from Emily Berk and Eva Ruth Moravec. Fact checking by Janina Huang. Sound design by Rick Kwan. Original music by Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Bryson Barnes is our technical director. Alexa Danner is our executive producer. Marisa Riley is the director of production, and Liz Cole runs NBC News Studios.
