As we covered on Tuesday evening, parents showed up in droves outside the Glendale (Los Angeles), California, school board meeting to push back against efforts to mainstream LGBTQ ideology in the classroom. Many of the parents are members of the area’s sizeable Armenian-American community, and some had protested at an elementary school the week prior – and after that, Antifa was called up to confront the parents at the June 6 meeting.

It wasn’t just in passing that my colleague Bob Hoge included that fact in his report. So many in the community are from Armenia, and they bring with them solid traditional, conservative values: (emphasis mine)

Glendale has a heavy Armenian-American presence—in fact, it has more Armenians than any city outside of Armenia itself, and some estimates show that the city’s population is 40 percent Armenian. Many Armenians have traditional values and don’t take kindly to having progressivism shoved down their throats.

This is the clear antidote to radical leftists claiming that anyone opposing critical race theory and other woke ideologies being taught in schools is a transphobe or a bigot or a racist (or whatever). The values that a family or a culture holds as important are deeply rooted and real.

The Daily Signal has been investigating what’s going on in the Glendale United School District with transgenderism, writing in their latest report:

Several emails obtained by The Daily Signal from Glendale administrators encourage staff to teach students that every person is naturally “queer” and “socialist.”

Parents also have alleged that the school district allows boys who claim to be transgender to share locker rooms with girls.

One part of their piece could help expose the progressives’ transphobia myth. The Daily Signal exclusively spoke to another opponent of the schools’ policies—a fifth-grade teacher whom the school district recently suspended over him expressing his opinion at an April school board meeting. This teacher happens to be gay, and appears to be beloved by the students and well respected by his colleagues:

Ray Shelton, a 25-year veteran teacher, spoke at a recent meeting of the school board for the Glendale Unified School District wearing a T-shirt that read “Make Biology Great Again.”

Shelton, who teaches at Mark Keppel Elementary School, has been named the Glendale school district’s “Teacher of the Year” twice and earlier this year won the PTA’s Golden Oak Award.

In an exclusive interview, Shelton, who is gay, told The Daily Signal that his intent in speaking at the Glendale school board’s April 18 meeting was to speak what he called “basic, commonsense truths.”

Shelton told the school board:

Two plus two equals four. The world is not flat. Boys have penises; girls have vaginas. Gender is binary and cannot be changed. Biology is not bigotry. Heterosexuality is not hate. Gender confusion and gender delusion are deep psychological disorders. No caring professional or loving parent would ever support the chemical poisoning or surgical mutilation of a child’s genitalia.

Transgender ideology is anti-gay, it is anti-woman, and it is anti-human. It wants to take away women’s sports, women’s rights, women’s achievements—it is misogyny writ large.

And I can also say this as a gay man, the gay people …

The Signal reports that the crowd applauded what Shelton had to say. The interview continues:

Shelton says during the board meeting he held up four “Progress Pride” flags arranged in a pattern to form a swastika.

After he spoke, “someone muted Shelton’s microphone and a board member informed the teacher that his time was up.”

Later,

[i]n a comment on social media praising a different speaker at the board meeting, teacher Taline Arsenian claimed that Shelton proved he is a Nazi by holding a banner mocking transgender activists as fascists.

The Signal added that the day after the meeting, Shelton was in his classroom when Principal Kristine Tonoli and a Glendale district administrator brought him a letter.

Shelton told The Daily Signal that he was given a letter informing him that he was being placed on paid leave pending investigation after “several complaints” were lodged against him.

But, the teacher said, all of the complaints provided to him by the Glendale district were made after he had been put on leave, not before, suggesting either that Glendale didn’t provide Shelton with earlier complaints or that Tonoli lied to Shelton. All of the emailed complaints provided to The Daily Signal originally were sent after the meeting at 8 a.m. April 19, according to time stamps.

After that classroom meeting April 19, Shelton was escorted to the edge of school property and told not to return unless accompanied by someone from the Human Resources Office.

Back to the protest event on Tuesday. Hoge wrote about the violence that ensued against the parents, with the presence of “left-wing zealots”:

Naturally, the left-wing zealots—read “Antifa”—showed up in force, and as you will see, some serious punches were thrown on both sides. A heavy police presence attempted to stop the fighting, violently pulling apart combatants to prevent serious injury.

Someone with a bullhorn shouts, “Do not engage! Step away. We are not here to fight!” Maybe that person wasn’t there to fight, but plenty of other people were.

Now, independent journalist Andy Ngo has new information, which he shared via his Twitter account that identifies one of those Antifa members who was arrested for taking part in the violence against the parents’ peaceful protest.

Breaking: One of the violent suspects arrested at the brawl outside the Glendale, Calif. school board meeting is confirmed to be Los Angeles #Antifa member Erik Boyd (b. Oct. 2, 1987). His $10,000 bail was quickly covered. He came ready for violence against the Armenian-American… pic.twitter.com/hBiH2aDv4V

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) June 8, 2023

Ngo writes:

Breaking: One of the violent suspects arrested at the brawl outside the Glendale, Calif. school board meeting is confirmed to be Los Angeles #Antifa member Erik Boyd (b. Oct. 2, 1987). His $10,000 bail was quickly covered. He came ready for violence against the Armenian-American parents @gusdparents by wearing riot gear.

Boyd has a long history of organizing with Antifa in southern California, getting into fights, & is associated with banned Antifa violent extremists @chadloder & Vishal Singh, @VPS_reports. He has targeted me repeatedly online

Boyd, Ngo confirms, is a member of the Los Angeles Antifa group. Here, he provides details on that group (click on tweet to expand):

Like the other #Antifa members showing up to engage in violence against families protesting schools or school boards, Erik Boyd has no children. @SoCalAntifa is a small network of violent extremists who carry out organized violence in multiple counties in California. Many of… pic.twitter.com/Z7IS4wBwdB

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) June 8, 2023

A commenter shared this wonderful clip of Boyd crying about only trying to defend himself, as police cuff him:

The best part of the day was when he was crying about defending himself. pic.twitter.com/FRrUGpKE9i

— Mario Presents Official (@Mario_Presents) June 8, 2023

Something that likely will only ratchet up the Glendale parents’ righteous anger—and the anger of anyone who cares about the rule of law and the Soros DA who thumb their noses at it—as Ngo reported in his most recent update Thursday, the violent extremist was “quickly” released on bail.