The high school has postponed its Spirit Week after complaints from parents. (Envato)
A Christian mother has written to her daughter’s school insisted that celebrating an “LGBT+ Support Day” would “incite hostility” among students.
The “LGBT+ Support Day” was intended to be part of Spirit Week at Billings West High School in Montana, but one self-described “mama bear” wrote to the school’s principal, Kelly Hornby, to express her concern.
According to local conservative radio station NewsTalk, she wrote: “I am writing to express my concern over the issues that will be focused and highlighted next week at West High.”
She said her daughter was a sophomore at the school, and that she had been “delighted” so far with her education, but that she was “very concerned about the repercussions of choosing to focus next week’s daily dress-up days to feature such a highly emotionally charged issue as sexuality”.
She claimed to be “of the opinion that all people deserve respect and dignity and should be treated with kindness”, however then went on to tell the principal: “I cannot support my daughter being encouraged to celebrate a lifestyle (LGBTQ) that our family believes to be against our personal religious beliefs.
“I am appalled that such issues that are typically private and personal (including religious beliefs and sexuality) are to be paraded in front of the student body without any regard to what that might mean for students who do not support this lifestyle.
“In a society and cultural climate that has been driven lately by hate, anger, and divisiveness, I am saddened to see that we couldn’t have come up with groups or issues to focus on that could bring us all together, rather than further divide us and incite hostility.”
She added that the day supporting LGBT+ students would “disqualify others who may not adopt that lifestyle but are being bullied for their conservative, Christian beliefs”.
Unable to tell the difference between LGBT+ identity and actually having sex, the “mama bear” said: “I’m confused as to why we are focusing on sexuality at all in a teenage demographic, when sexually transmitted disease, unintended pregnancy, cervical cancer, and mental health issues resulting from risky sexual behaviour are clearly indicated by the research to be on the rise.”
According to the radio station, the school has now postponed its entire Spirit Week because of complaints from parents.
In 2019, the same Montana high school made headlines for blocking students from accessing the websites of LGBT+ advocacy organisations like Human Rights Watch and GLAAD.
The schools blocked the websites under the category of “Alternative Sexual Lifestyles (GLBT)”, yet allowed anti-LGBT+ sites to be easily accessed.