Charlotte-area private school says LGBTQ+ students may be kicked out. Is it legal?
Sitting at his desk at Covenant Day School about five years ago, Matthew Blong felt a familiar white-hot shame bubble up from his gut.
He recalls his teacher saying that out LGBTQ+ people lived sinful lives and were “sick.”
Blong was still coming to terms with his sexuality then. But it was a difficult process to navigate when he was told often that being gay was wrong.
He finally graduated in 2017, and Blong came out in 2019. But those feelings of shame he says he learned at Covenant Day didn’t disappear. He was hospitalized his sophomore year of college because of suicidal thoughts and had to temporarily drop out of the University of North Carolina.
So last week, when he heard about a new policy at Covenant Day — that targets students and employees with non-binary or transgender identities and defines as sin sexuality outside marriage, as well as same-sex relationships — he was scared for current students. Employees who break the policy can be fired, the school’s handbook states, and students face punishment, possibly expulsion.
The policy, seen as discriminatory against the LGBTQ community, has drawn criticism from current students, alumni, former faculty and other community members. A petition online protesting the policy has gained more than 1,000 signatures and an Instagram account detailing student experiences of discrimination at the school was created last week.
Head of Covenant Day School Mark Davis on Thursday refused to answer questions from The Charlotte Observer in an interview. Instead, he spoke to a reporter by phone and read a statement saying the school “strives to demonstrate, care, consideration and respect for everyone in our community.” And he reiterated what the school’s new policy says: that “Covenant Day School believes that marriage is to be between one man and one woman ... This commitment is an important part of following Christ and being true to the Bible in our church’s historic creeds and confessions.”
Under federal law, discrimination is generally prohibited in schools — but private schools are exempt “to the extent that application of Title IX would be inconsistent with the religious tenets of the organization.” Title IX is part of a federal civil rights law.
Because a majority of private schools in the U.S. are religious, LGBTQ+ students have little protection at most private schools.
Covenant Day is located in Matthews but even if it were located in Charlotte, the local nondiscrimination ordinance that City Council members expanded this month allows for religious exemptions, too.
According to the 2021-22 Covenant Day School handbook for families, there’s a new policy this year labeled “Statement on Human Sexuality.” A part that appears to target transgender or non-binary people states: “God opposes the confusion of man as woman and woman as man” and “that individuals should live in accordance with their biological sex.”
“... Covenant Day School believes that the full and only biblically-sanctioned expression of human sexuality is in the context of marriage between one man and one woman,” the statement reads. “Our community depends upon all of its members living according to shared principles and beliefs in order to instill these values in the lives of our children. By enrolling their children in the school, school family members and enrolled students agree to conduct themselves in accordance with these teachings, and further agree not to engage in conduct or practice which contradicts the standards listed above.”
If students or families are unwilling to “partner with the school” to change their behavior, the policy says, the student may be declined admission or expelled. The policy says the school “reserves the right, as a church ministry, to employ only those individuals who commit to lives of biblically-defined holiness, as reflected in the human sexuality statement and the Christ Covenant Church position on marriage and human sexuality.”
The school is a ministry of Matthews’ Christ Covenant Church, which is part of the Presbyterian Church in America.
School officials during a student assembly on Wednesday addressed public outcry over the policy, saying the policy enforces what’s always been in practice.
Two people — one current student and one former student — told the Observer this week that administrators last year confronted a group of students, due to rumors in the school, and asked them to sign a document that confirmed they would only pursue heterosexual relationships.
No recent previous handbooks make mention of a “human sexuality” section.
But some alumni like Blong say it only codifies what they already knew: The LGBTQ community isn’t welcome at Covenant Day School.
‘A toxic environment’
While at UNC, Blong was attending therapy three times a week.
He had gone to Covenant Day since the 6th grade, and said for several years, homophobia had been indirectly ingrained in him.
After he was discharged from his hospitalization, he had to drop out of UNC, he said, because he “needed more time.”
“I was overwhelmed managing all my feelings,” he said. “Growing up at Covenant Day provided a toxic environment that told me and taught me the internalized idea I didn’t have a right to exist because I was queer.”
Although he didn’t experience blatant discrimination while at school (because he told no one he is gay), school leaders said things that were harmful to Blong’s mental health, he said.
“It took a lot of work to kind of abandon those ideas and form a different perspective of myself,” he said. “It was very disheartening because they made it seem like it was coming from a place of love, but it’s really coming from a place of ignorance because they’re so oblivious to the actual mental and sometimes physical harm it has on their students.”
“It felt like I was taught what I was going through was equivalent to alcoholism — it was something to be ashamed of instead of who I was.”
Blong has been back at college since last spring, years and miles removed from Covenant Day. But when he saw the @lgbtatcovenantday Instagram posts last week, it brought him back.
“All my freshman year, all I heard in Bible class is that ‘gay people should burn,’ ‘gay people should have the death penalty’...” one post from an anonymous student who identifies as bisexual says.
“As a parent of a former CDS student, I (am) ashamed for having been part of this institution,” another anonymous post reads.
Covenant Day alumnus Lance Lokas was reminded of his school days when he heard about the new policy, too — he was one of the few openly LGBTQ+ people at the school when he attended from 2017 to this past spring.
It was important to him to come out, despite how hard it was — he wanted to be visible, wanted to represent the LGBTQ+ community at school. That’s why he started the Instagram account, too.
“It’s easy to discriminate against or to oppress a population that feels invisible. I think in many ways, the queer community at Covenant Day School is invisible, largely because of the ways the embedded prejudice and hatred has pushed LGBTQ students into the closet,” he said. “I wanted to create a platform in which those many hurtful experiences can be heard.”
Lokas had attended Covenant Day since the 5th grade. He started coming out in high school and was fully out by junior year.
“My experience at CDS as a openly gay person was quite difficult already, and I know that a lot of the queer students at the school already face a lot of bullying and harassment from the student body itself and faculty,” he said. “To see this same kind of prejudice go from being social retribution to being something codified where queer students could have institutional action taken against them, that really made me really sad.”
He’s insistent that his entire experience at the school was not “terrible,” but he did experience prejudice.
“I’ve been called slurs, both in person and through social media. Friends have gotten cyberbullied,” he said. “I remember a girl from the school posted something online about how she didn’t want to be in the same changing room with queer women because she was afraid they would sexualize her and harass her. That kind of thing… it happens a lot.”
Lokas said he wishes he was more surprised at the policy.
“The school has always made their moral position on the LGBTQ+ community clear — in the way they teach in classes, in the way they express it in chapels,” he said. “But this is the first time any policy has been put in place that threatens the presence of LGBTQ+ students at the school.”
Identity and isolation
One Covenant Day high school student, who asked the Observer not to use their name out of fear of expulsion, said they were planning to come out at school this year. Since the new policy, those plans are impossible.
The student identifies as queer and also asked the Observer use a gender-neutral pronoun, “they,” in order to further protect their identity.
“For me, coming to terms with my sexuality was not something that was easy after being raised in the church all of my life,” they said. “But I pushed it down, primarily due to the environment I was in.”
The student said they flourished in school, so they were afraid coming out would change their teachers’ and peers’ opinions of them.
“I knew my identity would isolate me,” they said.
Even friends made their opinions on the LGBTQ+ community very clear. The student remembers their friends’ reactions when celebrities would come out. “That’s so disgusting,” many of them would say. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to date someone like that.”
The school’s new policy, which students say has been in practice but not written down previously, may have been prompted by an incident last year.
In the fall, after some texts were found by a parent, a group of students were outed to the school, according to two students who were enrolled at the time. Lokas is one former student, who says he was told of what happened by students involved. Another student, who is still enrolled, confirmed details to the Observer of what happened.
They both say that school administrators called in students to meet with them individually and asked them to out other students.
A couple of students were suspended after (not due to sexuality), the two sources say, and the group involved had to sign a contract that said, among other things, they’d only adhere to relationships in the Bible.
School leaders, at Wednesday’s assembly, said while the policy is new, Covenant Day has “always handled sexuality this way,” according to a student who was there.
A couple of students who wore “pride” pins during the assembly were sent to the office after, they said.
“There’s this constant anxiety in the back of my mind,” the student said. “Before this year, I wasn’t trying to necessarily hide it — it was something I had come to terms with. But now, I have constant anxiety. What if someone tells the administration?”
Despite this fear, the student said they still love the Covenant Day community. That’s why the policy is so hurtful.
“This is just so disappointing and so sad to watch because I know the path this school is going down by fortifying the most judgmental and hypocritical and non-Christian values is just going to drive away everything that makes Covenant good.
“It’s heartbreaking to watch a community you love, and try to make better, keep making things worse for its students.”
What the law says
The new policy isn’t just in the handbook — it’s now on the school’s website, too.
“Given the realities of our changing world, it is also important to say something about our understanding of human sexuality,” the statement reads. “We affirm that marriage is to be between one man and one woman… We affirm that God created human beings in his image as male and female…”
“While situations involving such confusion can be heartbreaking and complex, men and women should be helped to live in accordance with their biological sex.”
Covenant Day’s new policy comes on the heels of a historic Charlotte move to protect LGBTQ+ people. Just this month, the city expanded its nondiscrimination ordinance.
“It is absolutely heartbreaking to read LGBTQ Covenant students’ testimonies of harassment and bullying,” Charlotte Pride spokesperson Matt Comer said.
“... The school’s new discriminatory policy will only make the environment for youth in the care more dangerous. Knowing that LGBTQ youth face much higher risks of suicide due to bullying and harassment, it is, quite frankly, irresponsible and shameful for Covenant Day to be enacting a policy that will only lead to increased mistreatment and discrimination against LGBTQ students and their families.”
Local employment litigation attorney Luke Largess says the school is likely “getting their muscle” on the employment front from a Supreme Court case that was decided a year ago.
Two former teachers, who taught religion in the classroom and worshiped with their students, at different Catholic schools in California were fired. One claimed age discrimination while another claimed the school terminated her because she requested a leave of absence to obtain breast cancer treatment.
The courts sided 7-2 with the school, citing “ministerial exception” to Title VII, which bars employment discrimination.
But it seems Covenant Day’s policy doesn’t just apply to teachers who lead religious classes.
“They’re pushing the envelope on an issue that’s percolating through the courts,” Largess said. “Religious conservatives have been pushing this, so I’m sure [Covenant Day officials] have gotten advice they can do this.”
For Lokas, the issue isn’t religious.
“The problem here is not Christianity,” he said. “This is hatred.”
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 2:00 PM.
