Lesbian Kicked Out of Oklahoma School for Living With Her Girlfriend

by Alex DiBranco · 2010-11-16 13:12:00 UTC
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In Oklahoma, everything is not O.K. for gay students. Two teens in Del City are being denied the chance to complete their education because they live together as a couple, and the Del City High School principal doesn't want their "homosexual lifestyle" tainting his hallways.

Eighteen-year-old Melissa McKenzie states that she was kicked out of school for living with her girlfriend. Kelsey Hicks, also 18, says that she recently dropped out of school in large part due to widespread homophobia at the school. "He'll be like, 'You're gay ... you might as well just drop out now,'" Hicks complains of the principal. "It's the stuff that puts you down that makes you want to drop out."

Michael Jones writes on the Gay Rights blog that both McKenzie and Hicks are trying to return to school, graduate, and receive their diplomas, but Del City High School administrators don't want them. McKenzie was told she could come back — if she moved back home with her mother. McKenzie has no intention of kowtowing to discrimination and leaving her girlfriend to be allow back into the school's intolerant classrooms.

At 18, McKenzie and Hicks are not minors who need parents to be responsible for them. They have the right to live together if they want to, without meddling from the high school in their private lives. It's none of the school's business.

Other gay students, current and former, have alleged significant homophobia on the part of the school administration, which takes the position that if you're gay, your life is ruined, so why bother educating you. Since when are schools in the practice of discouraging youth from getting an education?

Sign this petition to tell Mid-Del Schools to give McKenzie and Hicks the chance to graduate.

Photo credit: brandi sims

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.
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