The next time someone tries to tell you that vouchers are a good idea, remind them about Trinity Christian Academy in Dallas:
Three weeks ago an 18-year-old honor student at Trinity Christian Academy was cruising toward graduation. He had already been accepted to a prestigious university, and the final months of high school seemed a mere formality.
He was a varsity athlete and a winner of service and citizenship awards at the fundamentalist private school in Addison. He was active in the school theater, was a yearbook editor and helped younger students with Bible study.
Trinity Christian was his second family, the student said, and by every indication he was one of the school's favorite sons.
But when the school's top administrators learned that the student had created a Web site where teens chat about homosexuality, he said they gave him a choice: either leave quietly or face expulsion for "immoral behavior," which is prohibited by the school's code of conduct.
Trinity Academy is not alone:
"I've heard of kids being outed in chapel in front of the whole school," said Marc Adams, who runs a Seattle-based group called Heartstrong that counsels gay students attending religious schools. "It happens all the time. It's just that so few people come forward to talk about it."
Since its creation in 1996, Heartstrong has counseled 831 students whose sexual orientation got them kicked out of their religious schools, Mr. Adams said.
Link to Gay student forced to leave school By Kent Fischer/ The Dallas Morning News