A Utah high school has reversed course this week, after controversy arose over a potential ban on same-sex Valentine’s Day messages.
The issue at Copper Hills High arose earlier this month, when members of the school’s choir handed out fliers announcing that there would be “No Same-sex Delivery” of their singing Valentines, reports The Salt Lake Tribune.
The flier was reportedly considered offensive by at least some students.
Dylan Lukes, co-president of the Copper Hills gay-straight alliance club, told The Tribune it “upset a lot of the student body… LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and even friends who are girls.”
Kim Hackford-Peer, an assistant professor in the gender studies program at the University of Utah, spread the controversy to the school’s Facebook page.
Posting on the page, Hackford-Peer wrote, As an educator, a parent, and someone who cares about the rights of all students, I am deeply disappointed in your current “Singing Valentines” campaign, which states that there will be “No same sex delivery!”
Seven hours later, Copper Hills’ principal Todd Quarnberg responded to Hackford-Peer on Facebook and said the entire incident had been a misunderstanding.
“My choir students who are sponsoring the singing valentines did not write the handout correctly,” Quarnberg insisted. “The choreography of these singing valentines made some of the kids uncomfortable with the delivery which is why the handout was worded the way it was. There will still be same sex deliveries of all other offered valentines.”
Queerty doesn’t buy the “miscommunication” story, however.
“Our hunch,” writes the blog, “is the original edict came from Quarnberg, who changed his mind when there was blowback. We can’t see really see high-school choir members having a problem with a little gay serenading.”
