The sense of siege extended to adults - on all sides of the controversy. Three notes, they hoped, were better than one. Underneath the main flier, they taped a smaller poster in case the first was torn down, and sometimes under that poster they put a sticky note imploring students to love, not hate. Club members laminated the posters to prevent defacement and took to taping them on all four sides like a picture frame, to make the ripping down just a little harder - tips they had learned from GLSEN, a national organization that promotes gay rights education. Club posters were torn off the walls of the high school, which is home to 1,350 students. A woman wrote in to the town newspaper: “It is heartbreakingly sad that our morals have come to this.” Some community members were upset about the school district’s lack of communication. There were rumors that the school would have “transgender restrooms,” or that a “homosexual-based curriculum” would be used in health and physical education classes. Its detailed acronym notwithstanding, theories about it swirled. Club: People Respecting Individuality, Diversity and Equality. Comments streamed across Facebook and in the halls of the high school and through the pews of churches: There was a gay-straight alliance starting up at Alexander Central High. Word spread fast through the county that fall.
