District deleted gay students’ yearbook comments

Graduation was coming up at Kearney High School in western Missouri and, per tradition, seniors were invited to submit quotes to go along with their portraits in the yearbook.

Joey Slivinski and Thomas Swartz, two openly gay seniors, took the opportunity to celebrate their sexual orientation, according to KCTV 5.

“Of course I dress well. I didn’t spend all that time in the closet for nothing,” Slivinski’s quote read.

“If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one should have to live in the closet,” read Swartz’s.

The pair said they chose the quotes because they were inspirational. But when the yearbooks arrived, Slivinski and Swartz found blank spaces under their names. The Kearney School District had removed their quotes without warning over concerns that they could “potentially offend” other students.

In a statement issued to parents and the local media, the district apologized to the students while at the same time attempting to defend the rationale behind its decision.

“In an effort to protect our students, quotes that could potentially offend another student or groups of students are not published. It is the school’s practice to err on the side of caution,” the statement read.

“Doing so in this case had the unintentional consequence of offending the very students the practice was designed to protect. We sincerely apologize to those students.”

In a Facebook post, Slivinksi wrote that the school district “showed me that I am not accepted for being who I am.”

Slivinski’s post, which drew an outpouring of supportive comments, ended on this note: “Thank you to the Kearney School District for making me feel like you’re ashamed of having a gay student.”