LOS ANGELES — Earlier this month, violence erupted during a protest outside a Glendale Unified School District meeting over whether the curriculum should include reference to families with same-sex parents.
It was just one of a few recent demonstrations of this kind including one at Dodger Stadium where roughly 200 protesters marched in opposition to a community hero award bestowed upon a group of drag nuns called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and another at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood.
Burbank Mayor Konstantine Anthony, who is also running for a seat on the county’s Board of Supervisors, spoke inside that Glendale district meeting and said that it was possible that the angry parents were not entirely aware of the actual curriculum.
“I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there. I think people are being propagandized to think that there is more happening in the schools that there isn’t,” he said at the microphone. “I tell families all of the time that this is the same curriculum as last year, same curriculum as the year before. Nothing has changed. Nothing is happening. It’s all age appropriate,” Mayor Konstantine Anthony sat down with “Inside the Issues” host Alex Cohen to talk about these protests.
“There’s a small faction of people across the country taking LGBTQ issues and using them as a wedge to drive people apart,” Anthony said. “The vast majority of Americans support LGBTQ issues and learning about them so that their kids can understand the world the way it should be.”
Anthony also spoke about being openly autistic. His official mayor’s website states he’s “the first openly autistic elected official west of the Mississippi.” Anthony said he sees some words, like “constitution” for example, as more than just letters.
“It’s the symbolism. It’s all the structures around it. How the difference in government work, the buildings and the laws. For me, it becomes a very emotional thing whenever I’m talking about big important ideas.”
Anthony said being in politics is hard as someone who is diagnosed with autism.
“There’s a lot of people in politics who don’t tell the truth and that’s very hard for me because I always tell the truth and it actually pains me to not tell the truth,” he said. “When somebody is talking to me and I start to get the idea that they are lying to me, it starts to become very difficult for me to interact with them.”
The mayor said he hopes that his position highlights the need for accessibility and universal access for people who are neurodivergent.
“I have a great staff at the city. I have a great support system in my campaigns and all of the things that I do. It’s a lot of work for those individuals to support me and help me out with the things I can’t do,” he said. “I’m hoping to normalize that. If I can normalize that, then everybody else can get the same support.”
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