This week read about Mary Kay Thomas suing a school in Minnesota after being fired for hanging up Pride flags, and an adoption agency filing a lawsuit over the anti-discrimination rule in Tennessee.
Principal Fired Over Pride Flag Sues
School Principal Mary Kay Thomas was removed from her position after displaying a large pride flag in the Marshall Middle School cafeteria in Minnesota. There were 30 other flags displayed to represent other countries as well as tribal flags and the autism flag.
Parents and local clergy were outraged by the presence of the Pride flag and urged Thomas to remove it; she refused to. Afterward, she was removed as principal and given a position that had not previously existed in the school district, the Star Tribune reported.
Prior to being removed, Thomas had also given out Pride stickers to the school’s gay-straight alliance club.
"Plenty of former students reached out and said, 'Thank you — if that flag was there when I was there, I would have had a much better life,'" Thomas said. "I only regret that I didn't do it sooner."
Thomas is filing a civil lawsuit against the school district which alleges a hostile climate, that board members had been heard saying anti-gay slurs, and board members had made sexual advances towards Thomas.
Adoption Agency Sues Over Anti-Discrimination Rule
Photo via Adobe.
The Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in federal court. It alleges that the anti-discrimination rule that bans foster programs from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation violates their rights, LGBTQ Nation reported.
The home and others like it are subject to this rule because they receive federal funding.
The lawsuit says, “It would substantially burden Holston Home’s exercise of its religious beliefs to knowingly engage in child-placing activities in connection with couples who may be romantically cohabitating but not married, or who are couples of the same biological sex.”
The regulation was put in place by the Obama administration, however, the Trump administration allowed exemptions for religious beliefs. The Biden administration is no longer providing those exemptions.
LGBT advocates argue that discrimination based on sexual orientation puts religious beliefs over the welfare of children.
