In April, Whitehall High School Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) Club was putting on a week-long celebration for Pride Week. During that time, Cathy Cook says her daughter refused to go to school because of the pressure she felt from teachers and her peers to join the club and their movement. Her daughter did not want to join the club.
"The principal sent out an email to all the students in Whitehall and the homeschool co-op in our area to talk about Pride Week, which is a normal thing to do," Cook recognizes. "But where the issue comes in is he attached a resource list from the Gay Straight Alliance Club."
Clicking on that, she says, opened up a second page of his newsletter, which had about 20 words on it.
"When you clicked on a word, it brought you to another site, and that's where the big issue has come to be, is this brought them to a lot of inappropriate material," Cook accounts.
American Family News emailed Brett Westerlund, the principal listed on the Whitehall High School website, for comment and did not receive a response.
Hundreds of people attended schoolboard meetings about the issue over the summer, but nothing changed.
"It was kind of put out in our community that it was the crazy Christians against the Gay Straight Alliance Club," Cook reports. "But that is not the issue at all, and that was never the issue. The issue is sexually explicit materials being sent to our students through the principal."
She is simply seeking an apology from the principal and an assurance "that this will never happen again."
In the meantime, Cook says her daughter will not return when school starts at Whitehall.
"There are a lot of wonderful, wonderful teachers at Whitehall," says Cook. "However, a handful of them have become very political, and they are pushing their agenda through the schools, through clubs, and we do not want this political movement being brought to our students."
