A member of the Asheville City Board of Education has resigned two weeks after a tense exchange during a meeting where she was misgendered.
Board member Peyton O'Conner said in a statement she decided to step down to avoid giving the group the Alliance Defending Freedom a platform for future attacks.
Instead, she said she hopes the alliance will take that fight elsewhere.
Two weeks ago, local pastor Ronald Gates presented himself at a board meeting as an ambassador for the Alliance.
Alliance Defending Freedom is a Christian legal advocacy group working to spread its beliefs in public schools, many against LGBTQ rights.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Alliance as a hate group.
O'Connor released the following statement regarding her resignation:
I have made the decision following the, I don’t know what we want to call it, the dust-up that happened a couple of weeks ago to resign from the board. So this will actually be my last meeting. Unfortunately, after consulting Craig who came to our last meeting and some other folks, it seems like the attacks that have been brought are going to continue to be brought and I don’t want my presence on the board to create a platform for that because I don’t think that it’s something that our LBGTQI+ students and staff really need this to be the forum for. So in light of that I have decided to step down so that that fight can hopefully be taken elsewhere, I didn’t come by that decision lightly, I think the writing is on the wall in terms of what the Alliance Defending Freedom has done in other localities and I really don’t want that to become something that’s centered on Asheville City Schools.
O'Connor was appointed to the Board of Education back in March 2021, serving just under half of her four-year term.