I posted yesterday about Michael Stack, a Christian special ed teacher at San Luis Obispo High School (CA). After the student newspaper published an edition focused on LGBTQ issues, he responded with a letter, published on the paper’s website, in which he said women who “turned against the natural way to have sex” and men who “did shameful things” with other men “deserve to die.”
That’s the sort of rhetoric that might make sense inside Christian bubbles, but to those of us who aren’t blinded by faith, that’s a straight-up threat. It doesn’t matter if Stack thinks we’ll be punished by God in the afterlife; the underlying belief was that there’s something inherently wrong with LGBT students, which is disturbing since he probably works with some of them.
It was appalling, really, that Stack wasn’t punished by his administrators. Principal Leslie O’Connor said that they already knew he wasn’t coming back next year — he was a first-year teacher on probationary status — and she felt his comments were just part of the push and pull of normal debate, as if this was just someone using his First Amendment rights. It was a ridiculous defense of hate speech. A teacher saying LGBT students (specifically) deserve eternal torture isn’t just some disagreement over a serious issue. If Christianity weren’t in the equation here, there would be no rational justification for what he said.
Here’s the good news: Stack won’t be returning for the remainder of this school year either. He resigned yesterday.
Special education teacher Michael Stack did not show up to work Thursday but sent the school an email at 1:07 p.m., which he also copied to Fox News, tendering his resignation, noting “the community apparently wants me out, so I hereby grant them their desires.”
Late Thursday morning, someone called the school and threatened Stack’s life, according to San Luis Coastal Unified School District Superintendent Eric Prater.
“We are concerned for his safety,” Prater said.
The death threat is obviously awful. Is it really any different, though, from what Stack said to the LGBT students? He threatened their lives all the same.
At least he’s gone now. He can go back to harassing LGBT people within the confines of a church where we’ve come to expect it. (That’s how Christian “love” works, right?) In any case, he doesn’t deserve a position in a public school ever again.
(Thanks to @LadyGirlPerson for the link)
It’s Moving Day for the Friendly ..."
It’s Moving Day for the Friendly ..."
It’s Moving Day for the Friendly ..."
It’s Moving Day for the Friendly ..."