I was talking with a family member and a friend who live in other parts of the country this week. They had seen the news coverage about the Zieglers controversy and footage from the recent Sarasota School Board meeting. During that meeting, the School Board requested Ziegler’s voluntary resignation. The vote was 4-1, which you could consider unanimous, as Bridget Ziegler cast the sole dissenting vote.
In our discussions, my friend and family member had questions. I shared what I knew. Both of them assumed that Ziegler had resigned. Both of them were incredulous when I told them “No. No she hasn’t”.
“What?” they asked. A loud gasp, more questions.
No. That’s how the Zieglers roll. Bridget did not resign.
Who is really throwing stones here?
Ziegler’s defenders characterized calls for her resignation as “throwing stones”, invoking a New Testament story. In that story, people bring a woman who has committed adultery to Jesus. Their religious law calls for stoning her to death. Jesus kneels and draws in the sand. Then he stands and says “let the one of you who is without sin cast the first stone”. One by one they leave, as they have also sinned. The message is clear: Be merciful. Focus on your own actions.
There’s a major problem with this “throwing stones” analogy. They’ve got it backwards.
The constituents criticizing Mrs. Ziegler were clear that her personal behavior was not their concern. They were offended by her hypocrisy, and how she hurt others.
The hypocrites in Jesus’ story were the people who wanted to throw stones, not the woman who had committed adultery. Bridget’s very public moral crusading was hypocritical like the people in the story who came to Jesus wanting to stone a woman to death. Bridget Ziegler is not the victim here.
Bridget Ziegler worked to target and marginalize LGBTQ students while she was, as one speaker commented “dabbling in their lifestyle”. Ziegler promoted and (she claims) helped create the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. Ziegler fought against a fake, manufactured “CRT” (Critical Race Theory) enemy. She marginalized African American students by embracing revisionist history of slavery in the US. As a Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty, Ziegler ginned up culture wars for her political gain. In doing so, she created a climate of fear and bullying in Florida schools. At last week’s Sarasota School Board meeting, parents shared how her crusading hurt their children, hurt their families. Some drove hours from other counties to attend the meeting and share how Ziegler’s policies had hurt them.
Their pain did not appear to have any impact on Bridget Ziegler.
You can hold a very traditional religious view around sexuality and still find the Ziegler/Moms for Liberty agenda and tactics damaging, reprehensible and inconsistent with Christianity and public service. As the Pope indicates, it’s not what Jesus would do.
Sarasota’s Moms for Liberty President Weighs In
One of the speakers defending Bridget last week was Conni Brunni, the Sarasota County Moms for Liberty chapter president. Brunni also invoked Jesus’ directive that only those without sin may cast stones.
Yet Ms. Brunni threw some pretty vicious stones herself during the last School Board campaign.
Conni Brunni is the treasurer and registered agent for the “ABCD: Accountability = Better Community Direction” political committee. During the 2022 school board campaign, Ms. Brunni’s political committee paid for a mobile billboard trashing the school board candidate running against Robin Marinelli. The billboard proclaimed the candidate a “Baby Killer”. This messaging was erected on a mobile billboard which was driven around town, smearing a candidate because she had worked for Planned Parenthood. The candidate’s child was with her when she saw the billboard driving around town smearing her. Yes, this is how low the extreme right morality police have descended when it comes to Sarasota School Board races.
And yes, even the Pope is not on board with a smearing, single-issue obsession. “We have to find a new balance,” he said in an interview published in Jesuit journals across the world. “Otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”
Donors to Ms. Brunni’s “ABCD: Accountability = Better Community Direction” political committee include Ms. Brunni ($2,929,51) Victor Mellor ($2,771.60) Victor Mellor’s “The Hollow” ($8226.62), and Robinson Gruters Accounting ($1,500). Robinson Gruters Accounting is the accounting firm of former School Board member Eric Robinson and State Senator Joe Gruters.
Sidebar: “ABCD: Accountability = Better Community Direction” reimbursed Proud Boy spouse Melissa Radovich for a vehicle rental and “gasoline for trucks to pull adv trailers…” Sarasotans may recall that Melissa penned an oped published with the title “Attacking Proud Boys does disservice to caring parents”. Radovich defended the Proud Boys as good husbands and fathers. The Herald Tribune deleted the oped online after public outcry and apologized for failing to identify Radovich as the spouse of a Proud Boy.
All in all, It seems Ms. Brunni isn’t in a position to admonish others against throwing stones.
Ms. Ziegler leveraged her School Board position for personal political gain – a paid position with the Leadership Institute, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty (the organization hired her husband’s media firm), guest spots on national television, an appointment to the Reedy Creek/Disney board, appointment to the New College President Search Committee. To get these spoils, Ms. Ziegler threw stones at vulnerable students and their families.
Will Ms. Ziegler’s decision to ignore her colleagues call to resign be a wise move? We’ll see.
In the meantime, let’s be clear that Ms. Ziegler is the hypocritical stone thrower here. Demands for her resignation are a reasonable community response to Ziegler’s damaging antics. She has abused her position in a way that has harmed those she is sworn to serve. It remains to be seen if those calls for her resignation will fade away.
