JERRY BUELL, FLORIDA'S GAY-BASHING TEACHER OF THE YEAR

by SCOTT ROSE

            Jerry Buell heads the social studies department at Mount Dora High School in Florida.  Recently, the Lake County Schools district temporarily transferred Buell to an administrative job after he gay-bashed on Facebook, to a public of about 700 “friends” who reportedly included some of his school’s current students.

            Buell said that for gay people to be granted marriage equality almost makes him throw up.  He likened gay civil unions to a cesspool.  The root of his rabid and unshakable support for sexual orientation apartheid is religious; he has referred to marriage equality as “sin,” and said “God will not be mocked.”  If you replaced his word “God” with Allah and said that “Allah will not be mocked” by homosexuals finally being granted their inalienable equal rights, you could just as well be quoting a demented Iranian Ayatollah as the head of a high school social studies department in the United States.

            And yet, Buell was once named Mount Dora’s teacher of the year.  He is the school’s faculty advisor for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, whose membership contract commits signers to abstaining from homosexuality for life.  Buell and his Fellowship want others to believe that their gay-bashing vision of Christianity is the only authentic vision for the religion, as though the Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Lutheran Churches did not ordain out married gay and/or lesbian ministers.

            A graduate of Mount Dora High School saw Buell’s gay bashing on Facebook.  After Buell knew he was alienating student Facebook friends less narrow-minded than he, but before he grasped that his actions would eventually be investigated by his employer, he lashed out at those who criticized him for his irrational gay bashing.  On Facebook, he published this: "If one doesn't like the most recently posted opinion, based on Biblical principals (sic) and God's law, then go ahead and un-friend me. I'll miss you like I miss my kidney stone from 1994." 

Facebook pages in support of Buell are crammed chockablock with ominous anti-gay bigotry.  One Buell supporter wrote:  “I am so glad that your students have you for their role model.”  Andother said: "Who do you think made Mr. Buell the kind of teacher who receives a teacher of the year award?  God of course! I don't know him but at least on this one point he is supporting biblical views of homosexuality."  Yet another of the gay-bashing Buells fans said: “I hate the gay right movement too Jerry as a Christian I going to stand for what I believe in”.

            Against that background, the Lake County Schools anti-discrimination policy and its student code of conduct do not include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and expression” as protected groups.  This fact raises grave concerns that the community could be bullying its gay students while considering anti-gay bullying a “healthy” form of peer pressure, as per the egregious anti-gay hate speech of the dangerously influential Republican blogger Dr. Rich Swier, who operates out of central Florida.

            This reporter asked the Lake County Schools if they plan now to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and expression” to their anti-discrimination policy and code of student conduct.  The district’s attorneys, apparently, have told them not to furnish me with a comment.  The Mount Dora, Fla. community appears to be more concerned with protecting a gay bashing social studies department head than with making sure its gay students have a safe and nurturing learning environment.