The people are starting to realize just how gross and ugly bigotry is. And this story shows how easy it is to respond to the needs of students.
When a substitute teacher in Utah started ranting against homosexuality in the classroom, some kids spoke up. Then when she wouldn’t stop, they went to the principal. And the principal fired her and escorted her off the premises.
Perhaps what made this story work was how obvious it was. This substitute teacher didn’t get fired for expressing herself. This isn’t a case of religious liberty in the Hobby Lobby era.
Well…actually it is.
Because this exposes the side of “religious liberty” the zealots never acknowledge. And of which the media is woefully ignorant.
The teacher asked her class to share what they were thankful for. One student was thankful that his dads were going to adopt him after years in the foster care system.
Anyone with an ounce of compassion would cry at such good news. Let’s throw a party over this!
Instead, the boy is humiliated, castigated, and cursed by a teacher convinced of her own righteousness.
We’ve heard this story told now countless times from the teacher’s point of view. How her rights are under scrutiny, her religious liberty is being curtailed. It just comes in the form of bakers and company founders.
We’ve heard her side, that version of events so many times in recent years. It’s become THE story. But this reveals just how ugly it is. How ugly all these stories are. And how true victims of such ugly pride and abusive behaviors have been ignored.
This kind of religious liberty is always a one-sided power-grab.
This time, something snapped.
A boy’s thankfulness.
His supportive classmates.
Supportive school leadership
and supportive parents.
All of it is important. They formed a united front. The boy’s story is compelling. It was right before Thanksgiving. He was finally getting a permanent home with people would love and care for him for life.
But central to this moment is how quickly the whole thing produced a positive outcome. How the best for the student and all students and parents and administrators was preserved.
The administration rightly treated the actions of this teacher as threatening to this particular student and to all students.
They didn’t succumb to the late understanding of one-sided religious liberty: of granting a veto-proof oppression power to Right-wing extremists. They considered the abuse, the victim, and responded accordingly and unflinchingly.
This action shouldn’t be remarkable. Go ahead and treat it like the new normal.