Gavin Grimm made national news in 2018 when he filed a lawsuit against his school to use the bathroom aligned with his gender. In a win for Grimm, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied a motion to dismiss the case. A hearing is now scheduled for July 23.
On top of his activism victories, Grimm will now be able to attend college without accruing thousands in debt, thanks to an LGBTQ ally and activist, Aaron Jackson.
Aaron Jackson is a well-known LGBTQ ally who famously purchased a house across the street from the notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, painted it the colors of the gay pride flag and aptly named it the Equality House.
Jackson has also sent a pride flag into outer space and planted a pride flag in Antarctica. After the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016 targeting LGBTQ people, Jackson gave a college scholarship to a young woman who was a victim of the mass shooting.
Now he’s giving out another college scholarship to Grimm.
“I was really surprised to learn that after all he has been through, no one was helping him,” Jackson told the Huffington Post. “When I started to learn that LGBT kids kill themselves due to this narrative that they are somehow less than, it really became important to me to use my platform to try to simply do my part in helping the LGBT community not only come into full rights but to help change the hearts and minds of people. Becoming an LGBT activist is one of the best decisions I have ever made.”
Grimm is equally excited about the scholarship.
“Removing the anxiety from the equation completely changes the way that I will experience college and give me more opportunities to learn and grow while I’m there,” he told the Huffington Post. “The enormous gift of not staring down crippling educational debt as I enter the workforce as a teacher is something I can never hope to pay forward enough.”
