Irmo High School Principal Eddie Walker’s has announced he’ll resign effective June 2009 over the creation of a Gay-Straight Alliance club at the school.
But for one group, June 2009 isn’t soon enough.
South Carolina Equality is demanding that either Walker’s resignation be effective immediately, or he be terminated.
“This Principal has emphatically and publicly stated that he does not support a significant portion of his student body. He has created an atmosphere where intolerance is considered a principled stand,” says SCE Executive Director C. Ray Drew.
The group says research shows 80 percent of gay students do not know a single supportive adult at their school, 38 percent of gay students face hostility and violence, and 18 percent of gay students experience physical assault.
“Eddie Walker has created a liability problem for the school. If a gay student is harmed, the District could be held accountable for creating a hostile school environment,” says Drew. “Every day that this Principal remains at Irmo High, students will continue to live in fear for their safety. These unsafe and dangerous conditions for gay students are intolerable. ”
So far, Lexington School District Five has not commented on the group’s demands.
A man this ignorant should not be in charge of the education of young people.
Kevin Wuzzardo, a morning anchor on the ABC affiliate in Wilmington, N.C., and an alumnus of Irmo High School, says he finds Walker’s stance to be an embarrassment for the school:
In a letter to “Irmo Nation” (whatever that is) Eddie Walker claims [he's quitting] because allowing such a club conflicts with professional and religious beliefs. He also writes that based on the school’s sex ed policy of teaching abstinence, “I feel the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance Club at Irmo High school implies that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”
I’ll bet the school also preaches healthy diets. So will the Spanish Club have to disband because members make flan?
Wuzzado says this is not Irmo High’s first time in the headlines as an epicenter of gay hatred:
[It was] 10 years ago this month Walker’s predecessor made another anti-gay statement of sorts. The school won a national competition that earned it a free concert on campus from the Indigo Girls. When some parents called principal Gerald Witt and complained that the Indigo Girls were (GASP!) lesbians, Witt cancelled the concert, drawing unwanted attention from media across the country and beyond. … [Even] though I had already graduated, I certainly lost respect for the way he handled the Indigo Girls.
Wazzudo also notes that Irmo High’s most famous alum is Donna Rice, the woman in the scandal that brought down the presidential ambitions of Gary Hart.
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your not educated
mr walker is the best principal our school has ever had
and you obviously have never talked to him
the gay club is going to cause more gay hatred
calling attention to yourself just because your gay is going to cause hate.
why cant gay people be like everyone else
we dont make a stright club
why make a gay club
mr walker is looking out for the saftey of his students
we dont influence your children to be straight
why should you influence our children to be gay?
the majority of our schools students and staff opose the gay club and hte resignation of mr walker
he is a much better contribution to irmo high than the gay straight alliance
this is a friend of the creator of gay straight alliance
Noah, children cannot be influenced to be gay, anymore than they can be influenced to be straight. People are born straight, gay or bisexual. The fact that you think otherwise is proof that Irmo High desperately needs a Gay-Straight Alliance club.
Eddie Walker chose to work in a public, not private, school. As an employee of the taxpayers, he cannot discriminate against students because of who they are. Doing so is called “bigotry,” which is a byproduct of ignorance and a gateway to hatred and violence.
Haters like Eddie Walker should not be allowed near anyone’s children.
To Noah and Jon:
Actually, high schoolers CAN be influenced to be gay in the sense that many students are in the questioning stages of their sexuality. I’m told there is a category for them called “bi-curious”. Bisexual students haven’t figured out which way they are going. The schools are under tremendous pressure to push homosexuality through such programs as “Day of Silence” (which many educators regard as disruptive of the education process, but their hands are tied by the ACLU to stop it). My hat is off to Principal Walker. I also find it interesting that DOS was created at a VA college, but is now aimed at high and middle schoolers. Don’t tell me there is no “gay agenda”; check World Net Daily online for the truth.
No, there is no “gay gene,” but Psychology Today ran an article suggesting homosexuality may be caused by a gestational/chemical problem in the womb.
What gay young people are never told, but sometimes find out later in their lives, is that they CAN leave homosexuality. It is a long process, but it is most assuredly possible. (Ever heard of actress Anne Heche?)
(Full Disclosure: I have spent more than a year studying this issue after my teen son, my only child, raised in an evangelical home came out to his mother and me and switched to Catholicism.)
Oh Stephen. You make me so sad.
Please give my regards to your very brave son. Did you mean he came out about being Catholic, or he came out about being gay? Either way, it must have been very hard for him considering your attitudes, and he is to be commended.
Assuming he came out about being gay, in your year-long search for who to blame for this, what have you narrowed it down to? The ACLU not allowing as much condemnation of homosexuality in the schools as your son was no doubt encountering in his evangelical home? That gestational/chemical problem in your poor wife’s womb? Or how about a father who, because of his own inability to challenge his long-held but erroneous beliefs, spends his time online, looking for proof of a gay agenda, instead of just accepting his son for who he is and leaving it at that?
Or here’s a possibility: God made your son, and at least 10 percent of the population since time began, gay because God’s O.K. with that.