An 8-year-old Oklahoma student was expelled for having a crush on one of her classmates, according to her mother.
“My daughter was crying, saying, ‘Does God still love me?” Owasso, Oklahoma resident Delanie Shelton told Fox’s Tusla-based affiliate KOKI.
According to Shelton, her daughter, Chloe, was brought into the vice principal’s office of the Rejoice Christian Schools. Shelton says the school administrator told her 8-year-old daughter that “the bible says you can only marry a man and have children with a man.”
“The vice principal asked me how do I feel like girls liking girls and I said if we’re being honest, I think it’s okay for girls to like girls and she looked shocked and appalled,” Shelton said.
Shelton says the school then expelled her daughter.
“They ripped my kids out of the only school they’ve ever really known away from their teachers and friends they’ve had over the past four years over something my daughter probably doesn’t know or fully understand,” Shelton added.
According to the New York Post, the Christian school system has a policy against any kind of boyfriend and girlfriend relationship. That said, the student handbook does not mention expressions of interest and certainly doesn’t state expulsion as a proper punishment for it. For the school, which is one of the largest in the greater Tulsa area and was founded in 1992, this expulsion might be seen as a following of its faith-based principles.
As with many similar cases of students or teachers being kicked out of Christian schools, one could argue that this event should have been foreseen. But with the student in question being 8-years-old, and several religious leaders recently expressing their support of LGBTQ people, this decision can’t be seen as anything but cruel.
Source: KOKI, New York Post,
