A girl with lesbian mothers has claimed that her teacher barred her from writing a paper in favour of same-sex marriage in case it would “offend somebody in the class.”
Destiny McDermitt (17) from Michigan is the daughter of Angela McDermitt-Jackson and Chris Jackson, who married in 2015. When her teacher asked her class to write a “Take a Stand” speech on a social issue that was important to them, she said she wanted to write on same-sex marriage.
However, the teacher at Hill McCloy High School in Montrose, Michigan, reportedly told her that she would not be allowed to do so in case it offended other students.
The teacher allegedly told the student she didn’t ‘want to hear’ about same-sex marriage.
Destiny then asked the teacher if she would ask her fellow students if they would be offended if she wrote about same-sex marriage, but the teacher refused to do this.
“No, we’re not going to do that,” the teacher said, according to Destiny. “I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to read about it, and I’m the one who has to grade it.”
This assignment asks you to think about what concerns you in your community, your state, your country, or the world.
The assignment description read: “For every generation in every country, every day, there are issues upon which an individual can take a stand.
“This assignment asks you to think about what concerns you in your community, your state, your country, or the world.”
The lesbian couple are upset over the incident.
“[It] offended me because I have two moms [who] are married and I really thought it was inappropriate,” Destiny said.
Meanwhile, McDermitt-Jackson told MLive that she and her wife were upset about the incident.
“We’re grown adults. These are our children,” McDermitt-Jackson said. “We went through issues when we decided to be together, but these are our children. They don’t need to be subjected to it.”
Montrose Community Schools Superintendent Linden Moore told the news outlet that teachers are encouraged to embrace “controversial” topics in class to encourage critical thinking.
“The teacher was thinking smaller and the kids were thinking bigger,” he said. He also revealed that the same teacher prevented another student from writing about animal cruelty.