School under fire after teacher told students to write letter to imaginary classmate 'struggling with homosexuality'

On Friday, WHAS 11 News reported that a Christian academy in Louisville, Kentucky is under fire for an assignment in which students would write a letter to an imaginary classmate "struggling with homosexuality."

"The assignment told students at Christian Academy of Louisville that the aim of the letter was to 'lovingly and compassionately speak truth to the person' in a way that 'does not approve of any sin,'" reported Joseph Garcia. "JP Davis, who posted the screenshots on Facebook, called the assignment 'deplorable.' Davis told WHAS11 that he found out about the assignment after a friend, who has a son at the school, reached out to him wondering what she should do because she was appalled."

“My heart breaks for this age of kids,” said Davis in the Facebook post. “This is not my Christianity.”

Superintendent Darin Long defended the assignment, saying that, “We believe that God created the marriage covenant to be between one man and one woman. We believe that sex is a good gift of God, to be celebrated within the confines of the marriage covenant, agreeing that all other sexual expressions go against God’s design," and adding, "This particular assignment, in context, was how a person could discuss homosexuality with a friend from a biblical perspective with compassion and love."

In recent years, a number of schools have had controversies around anti-gay remarks. In Cedar Hills, Utah in 2019, a teacher was fired after allegedly claiming that "homosexuality is wrong" to a classroom of fifth graders in a ten-minute rant after one student had said he was grateful for being adopted by his two dads.

This also comes as Republicans in states across the country, most infamously in Florida, pass "Don't Say Gay" laws that seek to bar teachers in public schools from even mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity in class.