I don't know the particulars of California state law, but, in general, private institutions are permitted to admit the people they want to admit. If the Boy Scouts can legally bar homosexuals from serving as cub scout leaders...

The other issue, though, is what sort of Christian is this school principal. He admits he expelled the girls even though he has no evidence they've engaged in lesbian sex. [Forget for a moment whether or not that should be part of his job in the first place.] He tells the parents he expelled the girls because they had "those feelings." So, we're expelling people for having feelings?

I remember FEELING that my 9th grade math teacher should be drawn and quartered and I'm pretty sure I would have volunteered to organize the whole project. I didn't act on it, of course, but I did FEEL it. I suspect that's pretty common of most teenagers at some point or another. Feelings about sex and sexuality are also pretty common for teenagers. How this principal can expel girls for having "those feelings" and still call himself a Christian is beyond me. Thank goodness I go to a church [Episcopalian] where people don't think in such ways. I guess somewhere along the line Christianity stopped being about compassion for your fellow human beings and started being about investigating and condemning people's private thoughts. My church never got that memo, though. I hope we never do.

... I would demand the principal's head on a platter. Instead of spending his time on the real problems of kids at his school (like drugs, alcohol, bad behavior, academic failure, etc. -- every school has these problems, Christian schools included), he conducts a witch hunt based on malicious gossip that a couple of students are lesbians.

And this witch hunt has achieved exactly what? He hasn't "converted" these girls to heterosexuality, if they were even lesbians in the first place. He certainly hasn't demonstrated any of the Christian virtues of forgiveness, mercy, understanding and love, which one might naively imagine that a Christian educator would want to teach his students. Nor has he set a good example of leadership for his faculty and staff. What he has done is anger the girls' parents, divide the school, and trigger a lawsuit that will suck down money that should have gone towards educating his students.

Firing this nimrod would be the smartest thing that this school board could possibly do, regardless of how they feel about homosexuality. It's clear that he simply does not possess the level of wisdom and judgement necessary to run a school.

I'm just curious--was this Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, or ELCA? While Lutherans in general aren't as welcoming to gays and lesbians as other denominations, I can't imagine someone representing the ELCA responding this way. The other two groups are fundamentalist.

When I was a freshman at my private girls school, I had an enormous crush on a senior girl. You could say that I thought that I loved her. Sexual orientation is so much more complicated than the Principal of this school realizes. In fact, I believe that understanding of kids in their teens and what they go through has become extinct due to the ignorant , and blind attitude of religious fundamentalists . I grew up in the early 60's and even then there was some understanding of how kids find their way sexually. I was not a lesbian, and some of my friends were. But the point is to assume that a person of 16 is one or the other based on so little, is just really ignorant. What is more, I find it rather amusing that the Principal was so interested in these girls' relationship. Perhaps it gave him a bit of a thrill to think of two girls having sex. Afterall, isn't that most guys' fantasy?

Was the relation "scandalous" because the women were supporting each other instead of being ultra-competitive for the affections and attentions of the boys? Because that is what things were like in high school, for me. I had very few female friends, and they always dumped me or betrayed me for some guy. Meanwhile, I had a whole circle of male friends who I could rely on to be there for me when I faced a dark night of the soul.

A woman not needing a man is anathama to fundies, I have found.