On the first Sunday of this month, the pastor of a Scripps Ranch church brought in a guest speaker who shares how she came to believe that being gay is wrong.
The venue was Marshall Middle School in San Diego Unified, where the Church has held services for nearly two decades.
The speaker was Patti Height of Out of Egypt Ministries, who told her audience that she used to consider herself gay, but now believes that was a “false identity.” According to her websiteher work is aimed at helping Christians serve LGBTQ people, to believe that being gay is incompatible with being a Christian.
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Pastor Jack Hawkins, who founded Canyon Springs Church 25 years ago, said he hoped it would spark a conversation that would lead to healing and show its members how to better love their LGBTQ neighbors.
But now the event has sparked calls from some parents and activists for San Diego Unified to end its yearlong lease with the church, leading to questions about what lines, if any, school districts or other public agencies will be allowed to draw when it comes. to provide space for religious and other social organizations.
Scripps Ranch residents and Marshall Middle parents are among more than 600 people who have a petition calling on San Diego Unified to terminate its lease with Canyon Springs because the church violates the district’s anti-discrimination policy by endorsing anti-LGBTQ statements. A Marshall Middle parent filed a complaint with the district, also asking the district to terminate the contract with the church.
Although the church holds its events outside of school hours and the church is separate from Marshall Middle, some parents and activists argued that students could still be influenced by the knowledge that their school had provided a forum for someone who condemns homosexuality.
“This is a school, a public school. This is taxpayer funded and this should be a safe, accepting, open environment 100% of the time,” said Brittany Fuller, the author of the petition, who founded the Scripps Ranch Pride Council last year.
Hawkins, meanwhile, said the petition misrepresents the messages of his church and Height, to the point of being defamatory. He said neither had taught anything hateful or discriminatory, and that his church was not trying to make gays straight.
One of the reasons he invited the speaker was to help parents whose children think they might be gay or transgender, he said.
“We are not trying to change anyone or transfer anyone. Our goal is to love people where they are,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins added that Canyon Springs has been a good tenant of Marshall’s and that his church, which has about 300 regular members, had raised $100,000 to renovate and equip the school’s theater where it holds its services with a new projection and sound system and carpet.
San Diego Unified is reviewing Canyon Springs Church’s rental permit to see if the district’s rental policy has been violated, district spokesman Samer Naji said in an email. Policy says school facilities should not be used by a group that illegally discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or gender expression, among other things.
However, experts say school districts can’t refuse to rent to a community group, such as a church, just because they disagree with the group’s beliefs or messages.
According to Eugene Volokh, a professor of constitutional law at the UCLA School of Law, school districts should not refuse to rent their facilities to a church or other organization based on the group’s opinion because they constitute freedom of speech.
‘The answer is open and closed. The school district cannot constitutionally discriminate based on positions in decisions about who to rent things to,” he said.
The exception, Volokh said, would be if an organization used a facility for expression that is not under freedom of speech protections, such as making threats of violence.
School districts are not required to make their buildings available for community use, said Troy Flint, spokesman for the California School Boards Assn., which advises districts on legal matters.
But if districts decide to do so, “it will be challenging to regulate or limit meetings based on expected content,” Flint said in an email.
Districts can’t choose which religious groups to rent to, Flint said.
“There are probably edge cases where a district could regulate based on expected content, but it’s a high bar that doesn’t apply in most cases,” he said.
“What should be kept?”
In her talk for Canyon SpringsHeight told the council that her past LGBTQ experiences and identity were linked to years of abuse she had suffered in her life from men, including her father and ex-husband.
After reading parts of the Bible and going to church, she said, she came to believe that homosexuality was a sin and that she wasn’t actually gay.
“I had a false sense of freedom because I was wearing a false identity,” Height said. “It was an identity I created to keep myself safe.”
At Canyon Springs Church, Height said Christians are not called to “fix people,” because that’s God’s job. She told them to love their LGBTQ neighbors as themselves and treat them the same way as their straight neighbors.
“Their hearts have to change before their identities will change — just like you, just like me,” Height said.
But for Jen Quinn, a parent from Marshall Middle School who said she was the only LGBTQ Pride Council protester to attend Height’s speech, some parts of the speech came across as more divisive than loving.
Quinn noted that near the end of the talk, Height picked up a Bible and told the audience, “Remember, they don’t hate you.” This is what they hate.” Height also said, “We know that those who are Muslim or Buddhist must convert.”
Quinn heard Height say that Christians should meet gay people where they are, but Height’s message came across to Quinn as: Christians should help gay people return to God by trying not to be gay.
My immediate response is: no, you are the ones who need to change. You are the ones who need to open your eyes and see that (being gay) is love and not an abomination,” said Quinn.
Fuller, who founded the Pride Council and is gay, grew up Christian and went to Canyon Springs years ago. She stopped going to church because she said she started to feel something was wrong with her.
Fuller found in Height’s speech the assumption that gay people can become straight to be harmful, and she wishes Canyon Springs had invited a current member of the LGBTQ community instead.
“What needs to be saved from our community?” Fuller said. “If no one needs saving and you’re just trying to love, why not invite someone who is an active member of the LGBTQ community… so you can really understand what it’s like and what it feels like to have someone you reject identity?
Marshall’s principal Josh Way stressed in a letter to school families the day before Height’s lecture that the beliefs of the church do not align with those of the school.
“Our mission at Marshall Middle School is to ensure that all of our students and staff feel safe, nurtured, and welcome on our campus and in our classrooms. This also applies to our students and families within the LGBTQIA+ community,” added Way.
Way noted that the San Diego Unified School Board passed an LGBTQ resolution in June that commits to honoring requests for student pronoun and name changes, allowing students to create Genders and Sexualities Alliance clubs, gender-affirming spaces in schools training staff on gender identity and sexuality and more.
