Nov 21, 2013

Equality NC Responds to Wilmington School’s Anti-Gay Policy

A Wilmington, NC, elementary school eligible to receive taxpayer funding in 2014 is instituting a policy that its students may not have an LGBT family member.

The Star News in Wilmington reports that Myrtle Grove Christian School, which is eligible to receive taxpayer-funded private school vouchers beginning with the 2014-15 school year, will also begin denying admission or continued enrollment to gay students and children from gay families in 2014.

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All students’ families will be forced to sign the anti-LGBT policy. A letter outlining this policy change said:

“The school reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or discontinue enrollment of a student if the atmosphere or conduct within a particular home or the activities of a student are counter to or are in opposition to the Biblical lifestyle the school teaches.”

According to NC Policy Watch, Myrtle Grove Christian School is listed in the Division of Non-Public Education’s Directory of Non-Public Schools, which means it will be eligible to receive taxpayer-funded private school vouchers in 2014.

“While it is lawful for private schools to reject those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, this shameful reality hardly makes it right,” said Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC. “But exclusionary policies like those at Myrtle Grove Christian School not only shed light on the sometimes harsh realities of growing up LGBT or in an LGBT family in North Carolina, they also expose the inequality of opportunity that our state’s current private school voucher programs impose on our state’s most vulnerable citizens. Because Myrtle Grove will be one of the private schools eligible for tax-payer funded vouchers in the 2014-2015 school year, Equality NC pledges to rally our supporters to take immediate action and lobby legislative leaders to make sure that not one dollar of taxpayer money can be used for schools that discriminate for any reason, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”