Can a student who poses with a rainbow cake really be expelled from school? One family says yes, but the school tells a different story.
A Kentucky family says a Christian school expelled their daughter after seeing a photo of her with a rainbow cake.
She received the cake, decorated in rainbow colors, for her 15th birthday party. Someone apparently showed the photo to school leaders. The family says the school then kicked her out.
But two sides tell different stories.
The school says the rainbow cake was the last straw after a string of issues. But they won’t provide specifics, probably because of obvious privacy laws.
But the child’s mother says her daughter does not identify as LGBTQ. She says she, not her daughter, ordered the cake and that it wasn’t meant to represent anything. The receipt, she said, merely states, “assorted colors.”
For one thing, this 15-year-old seems to like rainbows. In the photo, which her mother posted on Facebook, she’s wearing a sweater with a rainbow design.
However, the school apparently sees it differently. A letter reportedly claimed the photo represented “a posture of morality and cultural acceptance” that was contrary to the school’s beliefs.
Rainbows, I need hardly mention, occur in nature and are beautiful. But the gay rights movement uses rainbows as symbols.
So, naturally, some people assume that every instance of a rainbow (except for the ones in the sky) must be about homosexuality.
That would be a ridiculous assumption.
The school sent a statement to NBC News claiming it was false that the cake got the girl expelled:
“In the fall, we met with the student to give her a final chance to begin to adhere to our code of conduct. Unfortunately, she did not live up to the agreement, and therefore, has been expelled.”
In what way didn’t she live up to the agreement? Well, that’s a good question. The school reportedly told the child’s mother the photo was a factor in the dismissal.
The girl’s mother told USA Today that her daughter  wears “tomboy-type clothing” from time to time and has always been athletic. She also acknowledged a school disciplinary officer found Juul pods in the girl’s backpack.
Beyond that, any other disciplinary issues, if any ever existed, are locked away in files.
Should a school be able to use a photo of a girl in a rainbow sweater sitting in front of a multi-colored cake as even a “last straw?” I suppose that depends on your beliefs and how tolerant you are.
For an event that happened outside of school and, by the parent’s account, had nothing to do with homosexuality in any way, I don’t think so.
I don’t see how it could have been the last straw, but it certainly does take the cake. A rainbow was used as a symbol in the Bible long before it was adopted by the LGB community (the Ts have one of their own). I suppose, by the school’s logic, she should have been expelled had she had a “Flintstones” theme for her party. After all, as the song goes, “We’ll have a gay old time.”
What struck me was the fact that the school talked about the student at all. It seems to me that the school violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the act applies to any school that receives federal funding and that is almost every school. Just about all schools public or private receives some type of federal funds. I don’t know if the expulsion was justified or not, but for the school to to say that the student had discipline problems is a violation of FERPA and the school could lose the federal funding. The family may also be… Read more »