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A teen wore an antigay t-shirt to school & got sent home. Now her pastor dad is threatening to sue.

The father of a teen who was sent home from school for wearing a homophobic T-shirt is steaming mad, saying that his daughter’s First Amendment rights were violated. Now he’s “contemplating legal action.”

“It’s not fair,” said pastor Rich Penkoski, “that she’s told that she can’t wear that shirt and other people can wear the stuff that they wear.”

Related: Mike Pence whines that America has ‘little tolerance’ for Christians if he can’t be anti-gay

“She was basically censored,” he complained.

Penkoski’s daughter Brielle went to Livingston Academy, a public school in Tennessee, on August 25 wearing a black T-shirt that said, “HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN” in large block letters, and citing the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 in smaller print. That Bible passage is often interpreted as referring to pederasty and prostitution.

According to her father, Brielle was sent to Principal Richard Melton who sent the teen home because her shirt had a “sexual connotation.”

Penkoski – who runs the group “Warriors for Christ” which protests Drag Queen Story Hours and posts anti-LGBTQ videos to social media – said that the principal’s alleged reasoning was wrong because there’s a teacher at the school with a rainbow sticker that says, “Diverse, Inclusive, Accepting, Welcoming Safe Space For Everyone,” which he sees as a sexual message that the school permits.

Penkoski told the Christian Post that this is a “First Amendment issue” and the conservative website said he’s “contemplating legal action.”

He said that his daughter, who is being raised by a man who protests Drag Queen Story Hours, just decided that she “wanted to do this on her own.”

“They’ve got kids walking around with the pride symbol on their sneakers and pride clothing and nobody bats an eye,” Penkoski said.

“But if a Christian comes up there and repeats what the Bible says, they are seen as intolerant, they are seen as hateful,” he added, even though his daughter’s T-shirt was not a quote pulled from Bible.

According to the Trevor Project, queer teens are five times more likely to have attempted suicide compared to their heterosexual counterparts. A study earlier this year found that LGBTQ teens who died by suicide were more likely to have been bullied.

Penkoski is frequently outraged. In 2018, he was angry that his daughter was being taught some Arabic calligraphy at a different school in West Virginia.

“I saw the assignment of writing the Shahada in Arabic. Their excuse was calligraphy,” Penkoski said at the time. “I was like, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ First of all, calligraphy was invented in China 3,000 years prior to Muhammad. The fact that they were trying to get my daughter to write that disturbed me.’”

Both the teacher and the school insisted that the activity was “optional,” but Penkoski was still outraged, saying that the class’s unit on Christianity had “no Bible verses, no reciting the Ten Commandments or the Lord’s Prayer.”

In 2017, Penkoski was outraged because his other daughter was shown a music video in school that portrayed the struggles of a Black, gay teen. He said the school should have “an opt-out form where I can choose to opt my children out of” seeing gay people.

He also claims that his seven-year-old son was given a flyer for a clinic that distributes birth control, which is just odd because what is a seven-year-old boy going to do with birth control. Penkoski said that the flyer is evidence that the school is “trying to recruit kids, they’re trying to indoctrinate kids with liberal ideology, promoting sex and sexuality to kids.”

Gay blogger Joe.My.God posted some of Penkoski’s recent tweets.

Actual Story on LGBTQ Nation
Author: Alex Bollinger

altabear

My name is David but my online nick almost everywhere is Altabear. I'm a web developer, graphic artist and outspoken human rights (and by extension, mens rights) advocate. Married to my gorgeous husband for 12 years, together for 25 and living with our partner of 4 years, in beautiful Edmonton, Canada.

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