For more than a decade now, the Beaumont Independent School District’s Taylor Career and Technology Center in Texas — which has the worst website you’ve seen in a long time — has offered an Adult Cosmetology class. It caters to a lot of single moms, according to instructor Cequada Clark, and she was excited for the new school year.

But she recently found out the class was canceled by Principal Thomas Amons. Was it because of budget cuts? A bad evaluation? Nope.

It’s because Amons thought one of the students enrolled in the class this semester looked gay. And since it’s illegal to bar someone from a public school because of his sexual orientation, Amons — who is, not surprisingly, a deacon at a Baptist church — decided to just cancel the class altogether:

“As soon as we got a student that [Amons] thought was gay, that was the end. He saw [Kwmane Gray] come into the class, and then he came to get me out of there,” Clark said of Principal Amons… The instructor said she was told to tell Gray he wasn’t welcome in the program. Feeling a moral objection to what was taking place, she refused. “I told (Amons) if he wanted to tell that young man that, he would need to do that himself.” … Clark said she had mixed feelings about speaking out about what she knew concerning the closure of the adult cosmetology class, but in the end, she had to do what she knew was right. “It’s a chance they may fire me all the way, and honestly that’s a chance I’m willing to take,” she said. “I made up in my mind I’m not going to compromise or lie for anyone. I love my job — love it, love it, love it — but I have to stand up for what’s right.”

And then, last night, Principal Amons fired her.

This is unbelievable.

That a principal could get away with this sort of bigotry without losing his job.

That a teacher loses her job for doing the right thing.

That anyone would be surprised at a (possibly) gay student enrolling in a Cosmetology class…

Amons needs to be penalized for this. That’ll be the icing on the cake after the BISD gets hit with a massive lawsuit.

(via The Ex-Convert)



