Indiana Superintendent: Schools That Accept Taxpayer Money Should Accept LGBT Students and Employees Too

Back in August, Shelly Fitzgerald, a guidance counselor at Roncalli High School says she was given the choice to resign from her school or dissolve her marriage because her school was a Catholic school, and her marriage was a same-sex marriage. The ensuing backlash has attracted national attention.

Now the state superintendent has weighed in on the issue in favor of the counselor.

Indiana Superintendent Jennifer McCormick said that any schools that receive taxpayer money should also have inclusive LGBT policies:

“If our goal in the state is to develop a well-educated workforce and we want businesses to come here because we are inclusive, we are accepting, I think part of that goes to our actions,” Said McCormick “and when we still have schools that receive taxpayer dollars that can exclude students, that’s a problem.”

McCormick went on to imply that she would favor policies that hold voucher-receiving schools to the same standards as public ones.

This is not the first time this issue has arisen. Democrats questioned Betsy DeVos on voucher schools that discriminated against LGBT students last year and the same argument extends to employees as well. To that end, Betsy DeVos finally admitted earlier this year that she did not believe schools with anti-LGBT policies should be eligible for federal money.