Companies claim acceptance, support discriminating schools
Most Christian faiths welcome everyone to their worship services.
Such unquestioning acceptance is absent at dozens of Christian schools in Florida — many operated by churches — where students and parents are subject to a litmus test: Are you gay?
If the answer is yes, you are not welcome at these schools. You are banned.
That doesn’t trouble the state of Florida, which offers money to such institutions in the form of private-school vouchers that signal the state’s approval — or, at best, acceptance — of this discrimination.
A Sentinel audit of some 1,000 private religious schools’ policies found 83 explicitly stated that students who identify as gay — and in some cases if their parents were gay — weren’t welcome. Another 73 expressed their biblically based displeasure with same-sex orientation without openly stating gay kids couldn’t attend their schools.
In addition to the state, here’s who else is approving or accepting of private-school discrimination: The companies that convert the corporate taxes they owe into contributions toward Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
We don’t have a comprehensive list of which companies contribute to the voucher program, or how much, because that information is considered proprietary and exempt from the state public records law.
It shouldn’t be, but thanks to press releases and reports from an organization that administers the voucher program, Step Up For Students, we know who some of them are.
We also know that many of those businesses — while supporting LGBTQ discrimination through vouchers — claim to support LGBTQ equality on the whole.
Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, North
America’s largest distributor of wine and spirits with $19 billion in revenue in 2018, has diverted some $600 million in corporate taxes to the Florida program over the past decade.
But the company states on its website, “We don’t discriminate against race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” It’s not the only Southern Glazer’s reference to LGBTQ inclusiveness.
Southern Glazer’s response to Sentinel reporters who queried them on the contradiction was to forward a statement — from
Step Up For Students — in opposition to “discriminatory behavior, practices and policies against LGBTQ+ students in all public and private schools.”
Other companies like Geico, Wells Fargo and Waste Management publicly state their support for the LGBTQ community but still elect to send their tax money to a voucher program that props up schools openly practicing discrimination against gay kids and families.
We prefer to believe these companies are sincere in their belief that people should not face discrimination because of their sexual orientation. Some companies told reporters they were unaware that some schools had policies rejecting students because of that orientation.
Fair enough, but what are they doing about it?
Hand-wringing through statements isn’t enough. If these companies truly believe in LGBTQ equality, they’ll make public statements declaring their intent to stop diverting the corporate taxes to private-school voucher programs if the Florida Legislature doesn’t fix the problem.
That’s the least they can do. Otherwise, this’ll all blow over and everyone will go back to business as usual, which means turning away a kid because he’s gay. Or because her parents are.
About the only thing that’ll get the state’s attention is if corporate money starts walking away from the schoolchoice programs that legislators hold so dear.
The that companies can do is turn off the spigot now, which is what local hotelier Harris Rosen — a man of action, for sure — decided to do once he found out his taxes were funding discrimination.
The state shouldn’t be in the business of dictating anyone’s religious beliefs. It should, however, decline to support private schools with public money when those schools choose to discriminate.
Companies have the same choice in front of them. People are watching to see what they do. Or what they don’t do.