TX Parent Supports School District's Firing of Lesbian Coach
by Jim Brown
April 25, 2005
(AgapePress) - Residents of an East Texas community are backing their local school district's decision to fire a lesbian coach for insubordination and mistreatment of students.
The Bloomburg School District recently agreed to an approximately $100,000 settlement with girls' basketball coach Merry Stephens, who claims she was fired simply because she is a lesbian. Under the terms of the settlement, Stephens had agreed not to pursue further legal action if the district paid her the value of her two-year contract. However, those terms are not going over too well with many local residents.
The dismissed athletics instructor was a championship-winning coach who denied that she was a lesbian for five years. She currently lives with her partner, a school bus driver who also was recently fired by the school district.
Although Stephens was honored as a "Teacher of the Year" in 2004 and named "Coach of the Year" in three of her five years as head coach of the Lady Wildcats basketball team, Bloomburg resident Craig Hale says his daughter played for the girls' basketball coach and felt uncomfortable around her. He feels the school officials who made the decision to fire Stephens had ample reason for doing so.
"When you have a community who is probably about 95 percent against her, it's hard for a school board not to want to respond to that," Hale says. "As any board [would feel], if you have chaos in the town, somebody has to do something about it. I'm not saying that's why they fired her; I believe they fired her for other reasons, which are substantial. I don't know why they had to pay her off."
The concerned parent believes as a matter of policy that the school district should not hire homosexuals. "It's quite disturbing knowing that we can put a gay or lesbian in a key position, such as a teacher or coach," he says. "I mean, our children's minds are very fragile; they're open for something new -- I mean, from the age of 12 through 18, peer pressure alone is a lot."
Stephens claims she was fired because Bloomburg School Board members are homophobic. However, district officials contend the former girls' basketball coach was dismissed for insubordination, failure to comply with school board policies, and flagrant mistreatment of students.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
