The New Jersey Education Association's annual convention in Atlantic City drew over 20,000 teachers and support staff last week. Among the approximately 135 in-person professional development workshops, attendees could choose from sessions like "Q-riculum: LGBTQ+ Topics in the English Classroom," "Frameworks for Success: LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Unit Development," and "How We Advance LGBTQIA+ Civil Rights Through Unionism." One presentation featured a slide displaying what was described as a seven-day weekly instructional agenda — Sunday through Saturday — for implementing what the presenter openly called the gay agenda.

For years, anyone who used the phrase "gay agenda" was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. Now it's a PowerPoint slide at a teacher training conference.

The New Jersey Project, a parental rights group, spotted the photo on the NJEA's own Facebook page and circulated it. The union didn't leak this by accident to some hidden forum. They posted it themselves, on their own social media, like professionals proud of their work. The workshop wasn't buried in some off-the-books breakout session. It sat alongside offerings led by named educators like Carol Watchler, Patrick Rumaker, and Kate Okeson — the last of whom co-wrote a celebratory article about a 2022 NJEA convention drag queen story hour where performers Astala Vista and Vinchelle read books including "And Tango Makes Three" and "I Am Jazz" to an audience of teachers.

This isn't a new trajectory for the NJEA. In 2023, the Capital Research Center counted five LGBTQIA+ workshops and a drag queen story time at the convention, calling it "a bastion for left-leaning politics." In 2025, the union offered a session titled "Drag Is Not a Crime: The Past, Present, and Future of Drag," which the NJEA described as exploring "art, resistance, and activism." That convention came days after the union endorsed Democrat Mikie Sherrill for governor and months after spending $40 million backing former NJEA president Sean Spiller's unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination.

The 2026 convention did quietly drop the drag sessions from the printed program. No drag queen story hour. Zero LGBTQ-focused virtual workshops out of 16 offered. But four in-person sessions remained, including a Thursday morning block where "Making Schools Safer for LGBTQIA+ Students" ran simultaneously with "Frameworks for Success: LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Unit Development." The Friday lineup included a Consortium stage event called "Beyond the Rainbow: Moving from Visibility to Vulnerability" and a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee breakfast featuring a documentary screening.

Former NJEA president Sean Spiller has said, "Our schools need to be inclusive, safe and welcoming to all." Lauren Albrecht, advocacy director for Garden State Equality — the state's largest LGBTQ advocacy group — has called affirming schools "a lifeline for LGBTQ+ students." These are the voices shaping what 20,000 educators bring back to their classrooms.

The legal scaffolding is already in place. In 2019, Governor Phil Murphy signed a law requiring New Jersey's public middle and high schools to teach the political, economic, and social contributions of LGBT people and people with disabilities, effective the 2020-21 school year. New Jersey was the second state after California to pass such a requirement. The law includes no parental opt-out. A pending bill, Assembly Bill A4776 — a "Parents' Bill of Rights" that would allow parents to review curriculum and opt out based on moral or religious conflicts — faces long odds in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. None of its provisions have advanced from committee.

The Supreme Court's 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor affirmed that parents have a right to pull their children from certain lessons for religious reasons. It didn't ban LGBTQ-inclusive instruction. Some New Jersey districts reported increased opt-out requests afterward. Senator Joe Pennacchio, a Republican from Morris County, captured the practical reality for most parents: "You can opt out of everything, because you can't."

The NJEA's own Educators for Equality network claims 670 members. They maintain a collection of classroom resources called "Rainbow Connection." They hold an annual advocacy conference every June at NJEA headquarters in Trenton. And now, as reported by Not the Bee, they're distributing what they themselves presented as the gay agenda — on a slide, at a professional development workshop, to thousands of teachers who go home and teach other people's children.

A 2023 poll commissioned by the NJEA found 74% of voters agreed politicians shouldn't force teachers to "out" students, versus 18% opposed. In 2020, over 7,000 people signed a petition to Governor Murphy requesting the right to opt out of what they called "radical and controversial classroom content." The petition didn't change the law. The workshops kept running. The agenda — their word, not ours — kept getting handed out.