Homophobia in America's Schools

I intentionally write this post with a secondary intent of replacing the word “gay” or the acronym “LGBTQIA” with “Black.”

Aided and abetted by several Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rulings, America’s schools, public and private, are free to discriminate against gay (Black) citizens with impunity.  Furthermore, the discrimination is subsidized with your and my tax dollars.

Two SCOTUS rulings, Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and  Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue, overruled policies that restricted public support of religious schools.  

In the Trinity case the Court ruled in favor of the church when it objected to having been denied a grant for playground improvement.  SCOTUS decided in favor of the church because they deemed support of a playground to be secular, thus not construable as support of religion per se.

Espinoza was a more far-reaching precedent in that SCOTUS narrowly decided (5-4) that parents sending children to religious schools were entitled to a tax credit and that denying them such a benefit was a violation of their right to free exercise of religion.

Now, in many states, tax-funded voucher programs are supporting families who choose to use the vouchers to attend Catholic and other religious schools.  While the SCOTUS rulings cited above make a half-hearted effort to distinguish between secular and religious aspects of schools, the voucher programs make no such distinctions and vouchers representing tax dollars are inarguably supporting religious education.

Many religious schools discriminate quite openly against LGBTQIA (Black) students and faculty in enrollment and employment.  Some school policies compare homosexuality (Blackness) to bestiality and declare gay (Black) humans to be a violation of God’s divine intent.  

It raises the important question:  Can a state or other government entity be prohibited from discriminating against religious schools while religious schools are free to discriminate against LGBTQIA (Black) students and teachers?

The current answer is “yes” and “yes.”  The current laws allow tax dollars to flow to institutions that discriminate.  Although the law is not “settled,” both the existing precedents and the current conservative Christian majority on the Supreme Court don’t bode well for the separation of church and state.  In the Constitutional tug of war, the freedom to exercise religious bigotry is dominating the freedom from religion guaranteed by the founders. 

It is a double whammy against the separation clause; public funding of religion and public funding of profound bigotry toward LGBTQIA (Black) students and teachers.

Before retirement from my position as Head of Manhattan’s Calhoun School I engaged in an ultimately futile campaign to confront similar bigotry among private schools.  

The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) is, through its regional affiliates, the primary professional and accrediting agency for nearly all of America’s private schools.  NAIS’s standards for accreditation are rigorous and schools must undergo period self-study and visits from accreditation review teams.  Among the standards is an admirable and unambiguous non-discrimination policy.  It requires that member schools not discriminate on the basis of sexual or gender identity as well as the usual “protected classes.”

To my surprise, I received a job posting from a Christian school that rather firmly declared that successful applicants must adhere to the religious tenets followed by the school.  I downloaded the position description and found it included requirements to honor the exclusive sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman and the religion’s teaching on the immorality of homosexuality.  Looking further, by visiting the website, I learned that pledging allegiance to the same teachings was a prerequisite for enrollment as for employment.

I subsequently discovered other schools, accredited by NAIS, that had similarly discriminatory policies and practices.

I wrote to the NAIS President, respectfully asking why these schools were accredited by an association with a clear non-discrimination policy.  To be clear, I understand that such schools exist, whether I like their policies or not.  As private religious institutions they are free to embrace and impose anti-gay (anti-Black) policies and practices under current law. 

But my objection, quite apart from my personal sense of ethical offense, was that NAIS accreditation offers its member schools an imprimatur, an endorsement, a reassurance to the community that each member school meets rigorous educational, financial and ethical standards.  How then, I asked, can NAIS lend such an endorsement to schools that openly violate the non-discrimination standard?

One blog post cannot do justice to the double-talking, evasive, cowardly, dialogue that ensued, including with the NAIS Board.  I will share some of those communications with any interested reader.  In essence, rather than confronting explicit bigotry, NAIS chose to water down the standards to allow the bigoted schools to slip through a semantic loophole.

While perhaps a contrivance, I paired gay and LGBTQIA with (Black) to accentuate the continuing sanctioning of homophobia in both the public and private educational realms.   Even in the context of America’s dismal and continuing institutional racism, it is unimaginable that I could write this post with “Black” as the operative descriptor.

It is bad enough that the separation of church and state is so blurred as to be nearly invisible.  It is morally reprehensible that public funding supports open discrimination against our family members, friends and neighbors in the LGBTQIA community.