Tim Walz Was an Unlikely Ally to a Gay Student, but His Support Led Them to an Indigo Girls Show

When it comes to allies in the LGBTQ+ community, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is the perfect person to lend a helping hand and heart. If this were a movie from the 1980s, the former high school football coach would probably be written as the bully, not the protector. That's what makes Walz's commitment so important. He is simply not what anyone would expect, and that's the point.

Walz would go on to become faculty adviser to the gay-straight alliance at Mankato West High School. The program was started by a student who was determined to come out as openly gay before he graduated high school. Jacob Reitan had already faced a ton of bullying, but was hoping this program would help people better understand who he was. This was not the first time Walz chose to help a gay student. The previous time involved an Indigo Girls concert.

Before Governor Walz helped Jacob change his life, he brought a gay student from a different school to an Indigo Girls concert. The folk music duo was started in Atlanta in the mid-1980s by high school friends Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. According to The Guardian, both women were out lesbians within their own community before they signed to a major label. They now identify as queer. When they started talking about their sexuality, Ray said a "wonderful freedom" occurred.

Walz and his wife, Gwen Walz, met in 1994 while teaching at a high school in Alliance, Nebr. It was there that they both grew close to a gay student, reported The New York Times. Claire Lancaster, a spokesperson for Gwen, told the outlet they brought this gay student to the Indigo Girls concert, which was a "rare queer-friendly" event at that time.

Claire went on to say that Gwen's deeply rooted Christianity was part of the reason why she was so loving and accepting of members of the LGBTQ+ community. She has a "strong belief that God creates people in the way they are supposed to be, whether that is gay or straight."

Jacob was a senior at the Minnesota high school where Walz and his wife taught in 1999. His mother told The Times that, leading up to his formation of the gay-straight alliance, her son was horribly bullied. She recalled a time when someone chalked a slur on their driveway in enormous letters. Hateful messages were mailed to them, protected by anonymity. One said Jacob would be better off dead.

The last straw for Jacob was when someone smashed his car window while it was parked at the school. That's when Jacob told school officials he planned on coming out of the closet and wanted to start a gay-straight alliance club. They, in turn, asked Walz to be the faculty advisor. "It was important to have a person who was so well-liked on campus, a football coach who had served in the military," said Jacob to The Times.

Two years prior, Jacob was sitting in Gwen's 10th-grade English class when she suddenly announced that this was a "safe space for gay and lesbian students." This gave Jacob the courage to tell his sister the following year. He then told Gwen, the only adult at the school Jacob felt he could trust. Her supportive response helped Jacob come out to his parents, who were more worried about his safety than anything else.