Child expelled from school over same-sex parents
BROKEN ARROW, Okla. (KTUL/WKRC) - A same-sex couple is trying to use the Paycheck Protection Program to sue a Christian school that kicked out their daughter.
The school says the five-year-old girl can't start kindergarten there because she has two mothers.
Normally, a private religious institution doesn't have to comply with anti-discrimination laws.
However, attorneys for Sara Evans and Brittney Hudson argue that the school has to accept those laws because it accepted federal funding.
"These are emergency federal dollars that have come through to private entities that are used to getting away with discrimination like this," said their attorney, Leslie Briggs. "They only do so because they are private entities that aren't beholden to federal rules. If you take that federal money, that all changes."
The academy's superintendent says school policy prevents him from commenting on what happened.
But Hudson says she recorded their meeting with school leaders, and that some troubling remarks were made.
One comment made was that the school doesn't want the child to come home and learn that her moms' relationship contradicts scripture, another compared their relationship to non-Christian religions.
"Brittney, another red flag would be if we are looking at one of these applications and we ask people where they go to church and they said they are Muslim, then we've got a problem," one of the men in the meeting said.
Andrew McDonald, the child's father, says what he sees is a Christian school taking a members-only approach rather than taking the opportunity to show someone a Christian path.
"Nobody wants to have to have a difficult conversation with a five-year-old, because no matter what I say, if I give her the facts of the situation, she is going to internalize that she had something to do with it, when she didn't," he said.
A few other parents of students who attend the school have withdrawn their kids. One parent said the didn't want their children "indoctrinated with hate."
