Well. This is interesting.
It seems that a young woman in Louisville, Kentucky (Albert the Pious’ fiefdom) has been expelled from a Catholic school there because she wore a rainbow-decorated shirt to her birthday-celebration dinner with her family, whereat she was given a rainbow-decorated cake.
Concluding that the photo, posted by the girl’s mother on Facebook, evidenced inadequate loathing of gay people — perhaps even sympathy for the gay rights movement — Whitefield Academy expelled her.
The private school claims the picture is the latest in two years’ worth of “lifestyle violations.” In the email, Dr. Jacobson said the picture “demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy’s beliefs.”
I have to hold my nose and come down on the side of the school.
Granted, the average teenage girl is a sentimental idiot inclined toward hanging little glass unicorns and rainbows in windows, and I suppose it’s possible that she innocently wore the rainbow as a decoration that she likes — but I doubt that. Gays own the use of the rainbow as a political symbol no less than racists own the Confederate battle flag as a political symbol and, given that the school specifically condemns homosexuality, it simply isn’t believable that neither she nor her family knew that the clothing and the cake constituted a violation of the published rules.
The club has the right to make and enforce its own rules. What is more, this is a well-known rule; I would expect such a rule at a Catholic school. I would be startled to learn that a Catholic school did not have such a rule. I think it’s a stupid rule grounded on ignorance, and I wonder why any sensible set of parents would want their daughter raised in such an environment — but that’s beside the point. No foul here that I can see, and the girl ought to be grateful that the school has done what her parents don’t seem to have the sense to do — get her out of that squalid pesthole.