Santi Ceballos doesn’t know how to spell their drag name. They have never written it down. While attending a drag camp hosted by the local Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) last summer, someone suggested Santi go by the name “Sara Tonin.” Describing the character as “very outgoing and extra,” they decide after some reflection that Sara’s first name doesn’t have an “H” at the end.
At first glance, the larger-than-life persona could easily describe Santi's real-life personality. After coming out as non-binary in September 2017, the Tucson middle schooler signed onto a lawsuit challenging a decades-old policy forbidding Arizona schools from discussing LGBTQ people in sexual education courses — something that's pretty extraordinary. But Santi, who often trails off with adolescent shyness in conversation, insists they are just an average teenager— one whose hobbies include knitting and playing Minecraft, and watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.
“It’s shocking to see that one random 13-year-old in the middle of Tucson, Arizona can change the law,” they tell Teen Vogue. But that's exactly what Santi has done.
In April, Arizona's Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation striking down the state's “no promo homo” law, a 1991 measure passed during the height of HIV/AIDS panic across the United States. Known as ARS 15-716, the law was intended to prevent sex ed courses from discussing sexuality in any manner that “promotes a homosexual lifestyle,” “portrays homosexuality as a positive alternative lifestyle,” or “suggests that some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex.”
The bipartisan effort to repeal the 28-year-old law was introduced in response to a joint lawsuit challenging the K-12 guidelines on behalf of the LGBTQ advocacy groups Equality Arizona, and filed by Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona this March, plaintiffs claim the “no promo homo” guidelines prevent “LGBTQ students from having educational opportunities equal to those of their heterosexual peers,” arguing they are unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Santi is one of two Arizona students who signed on as lead plaintiffs in that case. Originally identified as “S.C.” in court filings, they claim the state’s “no promo homo” laws effectively segregated them from their peers during sex ed instruction. Students at Paulo Freire Freedom School commonly take courses on sexual education with classmates of their same gender. Because Santi doesn’t identify as a boy or a girl, they say they were forced into a one-on-one independent study.
Santi says the experience of being pulled out of class for the lesson and singled out in front of their classmates was “horrible.”
“It was in the middle of like one of my favorite classes—I think it was an art class,” they say. “They pulled me aside and everybody asked, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘I have to be taught a private sex ed lesson.’ It was really weird because I was the only person in the school who had to do that. It made me feel like even more of an outcast than I already am.”
School principal JoAnn Groh tells Teen Vogue that while Pablo Freire Freedom School has always affirmed its LGBTQ students, it now takes additional steps to ensure they are treated with dignity and respect.
What made the experience particularly painful is that Santi and their mother, Carol Brochin, say they had already moved once because of mistreatment in school. At their previous middle school in Arizona, other students referred to Santi as “it.” “What are you?” their classmates would ask of their gender identity.