Ohio voters on Tuesday decisively rejected a Republican-authored measure that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution through the ballot initiative process, a billionaire-funded effort aimed at preempting a November vote on abortion rights.

If approved by voters, the measure known as Issue 1 would have raised the threshold for passage of a constitutional amendment from a simple majority to 60%. The measure also would have imposed more stringent signature requirements for Ohio ballot initiatives.

The GOP proposal—which was the only item on the ballot in Tuesday's special election—failed by a vote of 43% to 57%, according to the Ohio secretary of state's office.

"Issue 1 was a blatant attempt by its supporters to control both the policy agenda and the process of direct democracy," said Rachael Belz, the CEO of Ohio Citizen Action, one of the groups that mobilized in opposition to the proposal. "When they forced Issue 1 onto the ballot, they awakened a sleeping giant and unleashed a movement. And that movement isn't going away tomorrow. It will continue to build and grow and to carry us through to victories in November and beyond."

The Republican push for Issue 1 drew national attention given the implications for both the democratic process and reproductive rights in Ohio, where abortion is currently legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy—though the state GOP is working to change that.

A proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November would codify the right to abortion access in the Ohio constitution, stating that "every individual has a right to make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one's own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion."

Frank LaRose, Ohio's Republican secretary of state and a U.S. Senate hopeful, said in June that Issue 1 was " 100% about" preventing passage of the abortion rights amendment.

Recent polling indicates that around 58% of Ohioans back the proposed amendment—a level of support that would have been insufficient had Issue 1 succeeded.

"From defeating Issue 1 tonight to submitting nearly twice the amount of signatures needed to get a measure protecting abortion access on the ballot in November, Ohio voters have made clear that they will settle for nothing less than reproductive freedom for all," Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement late Tuesday.

"Republicans should be ashamed of their efforts to subvert the will of voters," Timmaraju added. "Seeing this measure defeated is a victory for our fundamental rights and our democracy. We're grateful to our partners on the ground for their tireless efforts to secure abortion rights and access. We look forward to fighting by their side to lock this fundamental freedom into law in November."

The Republican attack on the ballot initiative process in Ohio is part of a nationwide GOP effort to limit direct democracy as the party—emboldened by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court—continues its effort to roll back abortion rights and other freedoms.

According to a March tally by election analyst Stephen Wolf, Republicans have recently tried to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot initiatives in at least 10 states, including Ohio, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas.

"In the many states where the GOP has refused to take action, activists have used ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage, secure abortion rights, protect the right to vote, curb gerrymandering, legalize marijuana, promote gun safety, and more," Wolf wrote. "How have Republicans reacted to this? By trying to make it harder to pass initiatives in the first place."

Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, said Tuesday that "since 1912, Ohioans have had the right to collect signatures and bring proposed constitutional amendments directly to voters."

"This is an important check on the state legislature, hyperpartisan politicians, and special interests who did everything they could to take away that right," Turcer added. "It was the hard work and resilience of Ohioans of all parties that prevented the destruction of a foundational right we've held for 110+ years."

"Tonight's results," Turcer said, "are a resounding victory for Ohio voters who helped stop this power grab by the state legislature and Secretary of State Frank LaRose."

Special Counsel Jack Smith Tuesday evening announced a federal grand jury has indicted Donald Trump, the ex-president, on charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding,” Smith began.

“The indictment was issued by a grand jury of citizens here in the District of Columbia, and it sets forth the crimes charged in detail. I encourage everyone to read it in full. The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

RELATED: Trump Indicted Over Alleged Attempts to Overturn 2020 Election

“The men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They are patriots and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States. Since the attack on our capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day.”

“This case is brought consistent with our commitment and our investigation of other individuals continues. In this case, my office will seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens. In the meantime, I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law.”

“I would like to thank the members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who are working on this investigation with my office, as well as the many career prosecutors and law enforcement agents from around the country who have worked on previous January 6 investigations. These women and men are public servants of the very highest order, and it is a privilege to work alongside them. Thank you very much.”

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene Mocked After Posting Hunter Biden Texts That Show Him Defending Democracy and Rule of Law

Watch below or at this link.

Pre-Trump Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to dramatically change how America elects its leaders – or rather, who is allowed to elect its leaders.

In a fiery interview with CNN, Ramaswamy, himself the product of two immigrant parents, said people who are born in the United States to one or two undocumented parents should not be automatically granted U.S. citizenship.

Ramaswamy promoted his belief that birthright citizenship – which is in the U.S. Constitution – should end, along with the automatic right of U.S. citizens to vote in elections at the age of 18, both of which would dramatically reshape the electorate, greatly reducing the historically more Democratic, younger voters.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.”

READ MORE: ‘Directly Harming Military Readiness’: Critics Blast GOP Senator Whose Actions Are About to Leave Marines With No Leader

He also wants a constitutional amendment that would require U.S. citizens to “earn” their right to vote, a right that too, technically, is automatic, although Republicans for years have been engineering roadblocks and methods to dilute to power of the vote, especially via gerrymandering.

He would raise the minimum voting age to 25, from 18, unless U.S. citizens passed a citizenship test, or served in the military.

“I don’t think someone just because they’re born in this country, even if they’re a sixth-generation American, should automatically enjoy all the privileges of citizenship until they’ve actually earned it,” Ramaswamy, a biotech businessman with a Yale law degree, told CNN (video below). “So one of the things I’ve said is that every high school student who graduates from high school should have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen of this country.”

“I believe that there are civic duties attached to citizenship, so much so that I don’t think you should automatically get your right to vote at age 18. Unless you have passed that same citizenship test that immigrants have had to pass, or else have served the country.”

On social media he expounded upon his beliefs, saying, “no one born in this country – whether 1st generation or 5th generation – should automatically inherit the full privileges of citizenship until they *earn* those privileges: every 18-year-old should have to pass the same civics test required of naturalized citizens, or else serve the country for 6 months in a military or first responder role, before earning the full privileges of citizenship.”

READ MORE: GOP Attorneys General Attack Target’s LGBTQ Pride Merchandise as ‘Potentially Harmful to Minors’

Ramaswamy, who is a U.S. citizen, has not served in the U.S. Armed Forces, although in an interview last week with The Breakfast Club he claimed to have “volunteered” for this country, at a local hospital in high school, as Mediaite reported.

“If I’m being really honest, why did I do that in high school? A part of the motivation, I’ll be just brutally honest with you, was that’s actually what allows you to get into a good college when you graduate,” he said.

He also admitted that the first time he voted was in 2020, when he would have been 35 years old.

READ MORE: ‘Directly Harming Military Readiness’: Critics Blast GOP Senator Whose Actions Are About to Leave Marines With No Leader

He also wants a constitutional amendment that would require U.S. citizens to “earn” their right to vote, a right that too, technically, is automatic, although Republicans for years have been engineering roadblocks and methods to dilute to power of the vote, especially via gerrymandering.

He would raise the minimum voting age to 25, from 18, unless U.S. citizens passed a citizenship test, or served in the military.

“I don’t think someone just because they’re born in this country, even if they’re a sixth-generation American, should automatically enjoy all the privileges of citizenship until they’ve actually earned it,” Ramaswamy, a biotech businessman with a Yale law degree, told CNN (video below). “So one of the things I’ve said is that every high school student who graduates from high school should have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen of this country.”

“I believe that there are civic duties attached to citizenship, so much so that I don’t think you should automatically get your right to vote at age 18. Unless you have passed that same citizenship test that immigrants have had to pass, or else have served the country.”

On social media he expounded upon his beliefs, saying, “no one born in this country – whether 1st generation or 5th generation – should automatically inherit the full privileges of citizenship until they *earn* those privileges: every 18-year-old should have to pass the same civics test required of naturalized citizens, or else serve the country for 6 months in a military or first responder role, before earning the full privileges of citizenship.”

READ MORE: GOP Attorneys General Attack Target’s LGBTQ Pride Merchandise as ‘Potentially Harmful to Minors’

Ramaswamy, who is a U.S. citizen, has not served in the U.S. Armed Forces, although in an interview last week with The Breakfast Club he claimed to have “volunteered” for this country, at a local hospital in high school, as Mediaite reported.

“If I’m being really honest, why did I do that in high school? A part of the motivation, I’ll be just brutally honest with you, was that’s actually what allows you to get into a good college when you graduate,” he said.

He also admitted that the first time he voted was in 2020, when he would have been 35 years old.

In May, The New York Times profiled Ramaswamy, calling him “a long-shot 2024 contender,” who “is lavishly wealthy and astoundingly confident. He also promises to exert breathtaking power in ways that Donald Trump never did.”

Watch videos of Ramaswamy above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Keeps on Chugging’: Unemployment Down and Wages Up in ‘Strong’ and Record-Setting June Jobs Report

When two campaigners with the climate protest group Just Stop Oil threw confetti onto a tennis court at the Wimbledon championship in London on Wednesday, the action—like others by Just Stop Oil in recent months—sparked a renewed debate about the effectiveness of disruptive demonstrations.

"As always, Just Stop Oil's actions have done nothing to further their cause," claimed one public affairs consultant.

A new survey of 120 experts on social movements, however, found on Friday that nearly seven in 10 academics say disruptive protest tactics are "at least quite important" to the success of a movement, particularly if the protesters' demands—in the case of Just Stop Oil, climate action—already have widespread support.

Although interrupted tennis matches; stalled traffic caused by Just Stop Oil's "slow march" through London, which is now in its 12th week; and soup cans thrown at glass-covered art as in another high-profile protest by the group last year have befuddled and frustrated observers, the study by Apollo Surveys and the protest think tank Social Change Lab found that disruptive tactics do not, by and large, harm a group's ability to effect change.

"We were really struck by the contradiction between what the public and media say about disruptive protests and what academics said," James Özden, director of Social Change Lab, told The Guardian. "The experts who study social movements not only believe that strategic disruption can be an effective tactic, but that it is the most important tactical factor for a social movement's success."

A poll by YouGov in February—four months after Just Stop Oil garnered international attention, including outrage, for its soup can protest—found that 78% of British people believed disruptive demonstrations make it less likely that protesters will be successful in their cause.

The new survey of experts shows that "we shouldn't take people's first reactions as the indicator of an effective protest," Özden told The Guardian.

The experts were also asked about factors that harm protests movements. More than 70% said that internal conflicts and infighting can hinder a group's ability to achieve its goals, and 67% said a lack of clear political objectives can harm the movement.

Only 36% said that objectives deemed "too radical" are harmful to a group's success, and 44% said an unwillingness to compromise can stand in the way of protesters' agenda.

"Whether we like it or not, the history of social change is also a history of political contestation and disruption," said Bart Cammaerts, a professor of politics and communication at the London School of Economics, in response to the survey. "Disruption of everyday life is often the best way to receive media attention, generate visibility for a cause, and above all to push political and economic elites to compromise and accept change, if only to protect their own interests."

The results suggested that a multi-pronged effort to effect change—including letter-writing campaigns, legal protests that have the approval of law enforcement, and disruptive protests like those of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion—are needed to push for climate action and other policy changes.

Both legal protests and disruptive actions were rated highly by the experts as tactics that have a positive effect on "movement-building" and sparking "higher salience in public discourse."

In response to the survey results, Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam recalled an interaction he had with an official at Kings College after he staged a disruptive protest to pressure the institution to divest from fossil fuels.

Others pointed out that highly-regarded, historic protest movements such as the fight for women's voting rights and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s had their own disruptive elements.

"There are two strands to civil resistance," James Skeet, a spokesperson for Just Stop Oil, toldThe Guardian. "One is disruption and the next is dialogue. Time and again, we see that public disruption is necessary to spark the conversations that result in much needed political pressure."

Andrea Mazzarino, The Wound of the War on Terror, Up Close and Personal

It couldn’t be stranger when you think about it. This country has been at war nonstop since September 12, 2001. It’s poured our taxpayer dollars — an estimated $8 trillion of them — down the sinkhole of those disastrous wars. The two biggest ones in Afghanistan and Iraq are officially over, though the U.S. still has 2,500 troops in Iraq and hundreds more (as well as private contractors) in neighboring Syria. Still, though we hear far less about it, the war on terror is ongoing. As Nick Turse has been reporting for years, for instance, the U.S. military continues to pour money and effort into war-on-terror-style military campaigns across significant parts of Africa, while terror groups only grow larger and more violent there, and yet who in this country even notices anymore?

Here, I suspect, is the reality of the situation: most Americans not connected to the U.S. military undoubtedly stopped thinking about the war on terror and its toll years ago — except at rare moments like during the disastrous collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government in August 2021 as this country was trying to withdraw its troops after two decades of failed war there. As has been true so often in these years, we generally neither pay significant attention to the damage we’re causing in distant lands nor to the damage we’ve caused ourselves in the process. Otherwise, how could it be possible that, during the recent debt-ceiling crisis, cuts were made to domestic programs, but the Pentagon budget, already larger than those of the next 10 countries combined, only continued to rise?

And yet, don’t think that, in the process, we haven’t damaged ourselves in all sorts of ways. Today, TomDispatch regular, co-founder of the Costs of War Project, therapist, and military spouse Andrea Mazzarino considers just what we did to ourselves in what might be considered a hidden campaign of… yes… self-inflicted terror. Tom

Americans in Pain

Confronting the Phantom Limbs of America’s Foreign Wars

America’s War on Terror, launched in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has had a staggering impact on our world. The Costs of War Project at Brown University, which I helped found, paints as full a picture as possible of the toll of those “forever wars” both in human lives and in dollars. The wars, we estimate, have killed nearly one million people, including close to 400,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan alone. Worse yet, they sickened or injured several times more than that — leading to illnesses and injuries that, we estimate, resulted in millions of non-battlefield deaths.

And don’t forget that those figures include dead and wounded Americans, too. Most of us, however, have little awareness of any of this. If you live outside the archipelago of American military bases that extends across this country and the planet — an estimated 750 of them outside the U.S. on every continent except Antarctica — it’s easy enough not to meet stressed-out military service members and their families. It’s easy enough, in fact, not to grasp just how America’s wars of this century rippled out to touch military communities.

In recent times, those bases have become ever more difficult for the public to enter and often aren’t close to the cities where so many of us live. All of this means that, if you’re a civilian, the odds are you haven’t met the grieving spouses of the soldiers who never came home or the shaken children of the ones who did, forever changed, sometimes with amputated limbs or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I’m thinking of the ones with those far-off gazes and the pain they have to deal with in their heads, their limbs, their backs.

Personally, I find it overwhelmingly hard to write about such human-shaped holes in our disturbed world. That’s probably why the Costs of War Project has a 35-person (and counting) team of journalists, physicians, social scientists, and other experts to portion out the research and the pain that goes with it as they deal with the fact that the monumental death and injury counts they’ve produced are likely to be underestimates.

As I write this, my chest tightens and my breath gets short, reminding me that some realities are impossible to contemplate without a physical reaction. And I begin to understand why so many Americans, including those not in the military — an estimated 50 million in fact! — experience chronic pain. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is writing a stunning series of pieces reporting on what many in the public-health world term “diseases of despair” like depression, suicidality, and addiction. A significant portion of those Americans don’t have injuries that are detectable via X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, or the like. Often, pain is linked with major depression, other symptoms of PTSD, or anxiety. Something is happening in the minds of Americans that’s not easily traceable in the body because its causes may lie in our wider world.

The Costs of War on the Homefront

Know one thing: in the U.S., so many of us do feel the painful results of our disastrous distant wars of this century, whether we know it or not. For instance, ever more Americans attend crumbling, understaffed schools, drive on roads in disrepair, and go to hospitals and health clinics (not just Veterans Administration ones with their seemingly endless waiting lists!) that don’t have enough doctors and mental-health therapists to meet our needs. Arguably, a major culprit is the war on terror. To take just one example, we could have fully staffed and equipped our whole healthcare system and made it significantly more pandemic resilient had we spent just a fraction of the $8 trillion or more this country put out for our foreign wars.

And the sting of war on our society doesn’t end with decrepit infrastructure, but extends to civil liberties and human rights. For example, our police are armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry and other equipment provided by an overfed Pentagon and in this century have grown more aggressive towards unarmed people here at home.

And believe me, pain from American war-making is felt elsewhere, too, often all too directly in the dozens of countries around the world where the U.S. arms and trains militaries, continues to fight counterinsurgency wars, and runs prisons and intelligence operations. There are the air strikes and shootings, the father or brother who can no longer be the breadwinner because he was collateral damage in a drone strike, the millions of displaced and malnourished people — many of them mothers with children — in countries where Washington has supported authoritarian regimes in questionable counterinsurgency wars.

Pain That Is Difficult to Trace

Given global events since those 9/11 attacks, it shouldn’t be surprising that pain is so frequently experienced by people in our military communities. Somewhere between 31% and 44% of active-duty American soldiers report chronic pain of some sort. That’s significantly higher than in the general population. And no surprise in this either: veterans are about 40% more likely to report chronic pain than non-veterans.

Chronic pain is, in fact, part of a category of neurological conditions that ranks as the fifth most common source of disability for service members treated at on-installation clinics and hospitals. Worse yet, military pain-related diagnoses have been growing. Back pain, neck pain, knee pain, migraines, and chest pain are becoming the norm.

As a military spouse and a therapist who has treated many soldiers and veterans, I’ve all too often observed how such pain, while sometimes untraceable to a visible source, is all too real — real enough, in fact, to immobilize some soldiers, or even keep them from successfully stringing together sentences. (And while I’ve seldom found that commonly recommended medication treatments truly alleviate such pain in a sustainable way, I have watched it subside over time thanks to the sorts of things that also boost mental health — talk therapy, exercise, and deepening friendships.)

Of course, military communities aren’t the only places where such pain is commonplace. It’s also experienced all too often by poor Americans without college degrees, especially women and people of color — in other words, the most vulnerable slices of our American pie.

The portraits in Kristof’s pieces reveal some surprising findings about pain. First, the amount of pain you experience depends not just on the physical injury that may show up on an X-ray or CT scan or, in the case of soldiers, the wound you got, but on what you think and feel. Two-thirds of people with depression have unexplained chronic pain, for example. Doctors have even discovered that some people reporting knee pain have no discernable anatomical problem.

By the same token, the brain has a certain ability to heal or ameliorate pain. In some cases, through the use of “mirror therapy,” people have been able to ease pain from an amputated limb or “phantom limb” by looking repeatedly at the intact one and somehow creating the impression that they’re okay.

Some people, military or not, with chronic depression, anxiety, or PTSD symptoms like exaggerated startle reflexes or sleep problems experience greater sensitivity to pain if they get physically injured again. Their brains, it turns out, have been trained by trauma to believe something’s wrong with their bodies.

Common diagnoses that have seeped into household parlance tend to reinforce this notion for many. Medical categories like fibromyalgia and irritable bowel symptom make pain sound as though it’s related to something tangible, except that all too often, it’s “just” pain.

It’s hardly a surprise anymore that the go-to treatment for pain in America is opioids, and look where that’s left us — with an epidemic of addiction and deaths to the tune of tens of thousands of lives lost yearly. Somehow, that approach to dealing with pain brings me back to the way the U.S. fought “terrorism” after the 9/11 attacks — with our own brand of terror (war!) globally and, indeed, it not only proved all too addictive but so much more costly to us and so many others on this planet than the original blow.

The Phantom Limb of American Society

If this comparison seems kind of out there to you, that’s my point. The problems experienced by Americans in pain are often all too hard to pin down, because at least in part they derive from survival guilt at having watched fellow soldiers getting blown to pieces by improvised explosive devices, or your parents dying from Covid because their jobs as janitors didn’t allow them to quarantine, or intense loneliness in a pandemic that made high school a virtual solo performance for all too many students. And get this: you don’t even need to go through one of those nightmarish scenarios personally to be in pain. Just hearing about economic insecurity in our world can exacerbate whatever aches you have.

This makes me wonder what it was like for so many to watch the recent coverage of Congress reaching the precipice over whether to raise the debt ceiling so that the government could pay its bills. How did it affect already struggling people to contemplate imminent economic catastrophe in the form of potentially soaring interest rates, inflation, job loss, and potential cutoffs in social services like healthcare? As a therapist who relies heavily on state-funded health insurance for my income and whose spouse is a soon-to-be veteran, I can’t help but scoff at congressional representatives who claim to be supporting our military by insisting on raising already astronomic Pentagon funding yet higher, while trying to gut the very systems that would let even a family as privileged as mine make ends meet once a soldier finishes his or her service.

Now look a little farther out if you want to be anxious. Most Americans don’t realize that our forever wars have been funded almost entirely by borrowing. A fundamental reason why we have to talk about a debt ceiling and continue to borrow ever more money to pay bills like those due for Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps is war. One key reason why we need to worry at all about making college graduates start paying their exorbitant loans back again is… yes, our debts from war-making. Notice a theme here?

Of course, war means that the remedies for pain that have proven to be most effective in the long run are not as available to those who experience the most pain. Exercise, certain types of talk therapy, and community are key and yet can be all too sparsely available to those working multiple jobs and struggling to pay their bills, not to mention those being shipped from base to base amid the grinding pace of military life.

In the meantime, military families and veterans are left to pay the costs of war directly via just about every kind of stress and distress imaginable. I remember someone I knew at one military post. A person of color and a veteran of the Vietnam war, he’d often be outside his house in the early mornings and evenings, smoking weed in order to alleviate leg pain that was untraceable to any particular injury. What he did talk about frequently were his painful memories of shooting at rural, dark-skinned villagers in Vietnam who resembled his own farmworker family in the U.S. when he was growing up. Trauma and pain were his frequent travel companions and yet the source of his pain remained unidentifiable in his small, fit body.

As then-President Donald Trump had banned or suspended the entry of people from eight different majority Muslim nations (as well as other refugees) to this country, I knew life wasn’t easy for him. He was, after all, often mistaken for a Muslim, called racial slurs, and told by passersby to go back where he came from. And even so many years later, that veteran and all too many soldiers like him may still not find a healthy part of our country to look at in order to convince themselves that life indeed will be okay.

Yes, there are all too many sick parts of our land, including a shaky social safety net, the hate and violence that continue to spread, and the long lines to get anywhere near a doctor or therapist. Contemplating all of this can be like gazing at a phantom limb that still smarts, even as so many of the original injuries — from 9/11 to our disastrous military response to it — seem all too forgettable to so many of us. Sad to say, but it’s vital that we remember the costs of war not only for ourselves but for those millions of people out there who experienced the — in every sense — wounds we inflicted in the name of an injured America in our nightmarish war on terror. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if we do it again.

Some emails contained vitriolic screeds. Others expressed concern for gay teachers. One offered a plaintive plea from a high school student bewildered by the conduct of adults.

Taken together, emails obtained by Raw Story help tell the inside story of what would this week become a national news event — the resurrection of an LGBTQ-themed play, "Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood," following its cancellation by a public high school in Fort Wayne, Ind.

The students, with outside financial and logistical support, put on the play anyway as an independent production after a months-long saga involving Carroll High School, principal Cleve Million and district superintendent Wayne Barker.

“I'm guessing you are a True Florida Man and this is all about Don't say Gay....well Wayne GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY !!!” one email said. “Your main role is to educate our kids, well … you've done your job to educate them in YOUR HOMOPHOBIA! Signed, straight married white dude.”

Another wrote that Northwest Allen County Schools “used to be a place any teacher would desire to work. It's very sad that it's come to this point. Please STOP catering to these parents and students with their ultra right wing agenda. They will never stop complaining and trying to force their agenda on our schools until you stand up and say NO. We are a PUBLIC school. Show your teachers you support them!”

Raw Story obtained the emails through the Indiana Access to Public Records Act. The district lightly redacted some of the emails and cited exceptions in public records law to withhold others. Raw Story redacted emailers' personal contact information.

The issues discussed in the emails attracted the attention of media from the Washington Post to Playbill, which publishes programs for Broadway and Off Broadway shows and covers the industry. It also elicited an inquiry from the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Barker, who also received emails supporting the school’s actions, answered most critics by offering to meet with them and explaining that the cancellation was Million’s decision — and that he supported it.

“It became apparent to Mr. Million that this was becoming a divisive issue for students who were interested in participating in the play,” Barker wrote. “For those reasons, it was cancelled.”

At least one emailer wouldn’t accept that explanation.

“You certainly understand that, given the comments of (school) board members, it’s hard to view this as anything other than a reaction to queer content in this play,” he said.

Another emailer took a particularly harsh tone, writing to Barker, “I am simply ashamed of the cowardice demonstrated by you and the rest of the school board in cowing to the fascist thugs who use religion to justify policy at a secular institution. You have no right to call yourself a man, stand up for freedom of speech or resign, as cowards have no place in the education of our youth.”

An emailer to Million and school board members asked them for empathy.

“Please put yourselves in the shoes of a young person who is targeted by this kind of hate in their very own community,” it said, “by parents who claim to be caring, Christian adults, and by classmates who openly call them faggots and other slurs, tell them they should just do the world a favor and kill themselves, etc.”

Million responded that he had met with “many” LGBTQ+ students who reached out to him.

“They have been good, positive, and constructive conversations,” Million wrote. “Many of our conversations have centered around support not only for the LGBTQ+ students but all students and what that could look like. As I continue to have these conversations with students, I am gaining their insight at how we can support and protect them.”

A teacher in the Fort Wayne district, which is in Indiana’s second-largest city, wrote to Barker that his colleagues “fear that this will open the door and invite more bigotry aimed beyond just the students.”

“When a colleague approaches you and tearfully asks, ‘What will happen when a parent complains about my orientation?’ it is easy to feel apprehensive about the climate in the district,” the email said. “Unfortunately, there are those in this community who will see the cancelation of the play as a win for their beliefs, be they political, religious, or otherwise, and they will feel emboldened to push even more in the future.”

Another emailer feared educational quality could suffer if the district is seen as bigoted.

“If our teachers continue to have to deal with being called groomers, being told they are indoctrinating their students and pushing their personal beliefs on them, they will leave,” it said. “With all of the new anti-LGBTQIA bills being passed, they will now have to worry about outing their students to parents, dealing with students who no longer trust them as teachers, and constantly worrying about saying something to offend a student or parent.”

One student’s email showed maturity well beyond many teenagers’ years.

“Parents care more about students’ identity, ethnicity, race, and political views than any student at Carroll,” the student wrote. “Honestly, Carroll students do a really good job at representing equality and not caring about people’s identity. Although seeing adults act the way they do just makes me question the people that are supposed to be building my future and my peers’ future. It’s scary seeing adults treat kids this way.”