With same-sex marriage being legalized, it’s very easy to forget there is a large population of bigots hell bent on hurting anyone different from them. This became a reality for a young Betsy Layne High School student.
Dalton Maldonado is a basketball player that recently came out at his rural Kentucky high school. The school had a yearbook spread of all of the senior basketball players, except one.
This is the spread Maldonado was left out of:
He expressed how being left out deeply hurt him, and he made clear that the school knew about harassment he was facing for being gay and they did nothing.
Here is Maldonado’s statement regarding his discovery of being left out:
“Then I had a person [affiliated] with the school tell me what they had learned about the school attempting to cover up the whole story. I recently saw my senior yearbook, I flipped right to the sports basketball page only to find my senior basketball picture missing…which devastated me.”
This assault on LGBTQ+ rights comes as no surprise from such a rural Kentucky school. However this doesn’t excuse such despicable actions. The school is showing their true disgusting colors. In fact, according to OutSports their have been multiple witnesses to discrimination against Maldonado, but the school still claims the verbal assault based on his sexuality never happened. They also claimed OutSport’s story was almost a complete “fabrication.”
This bigoted school really is waging a religious war at the expense of this high school student. Casandra Akers, the principal of the Kentucky school, and her staff need to answer questions and be held accountable for these hateful actions and their terrible response to the homophobic slurs being said to Maldonado.
However according to Dalton’s Facebook page the superintendent of the school called Dalton and did apologize. The superintendent also tried to overlook the picture by saying he was in the yearbook fifteen other times. However according to Dalton the school is still trying to sweep the initial verbal harassment based on his sexuality under the rug by denying it ever happened.
Here is the image Maldonado says was supposed to be in the yearbook spread:
The reality is that this response is only because of the negative publicity they have received over their actions. The school’s actions are too little too late, and they really aren’t helping this high school student facing the harsh reality that these bigots are bestowing upon him.
Featured Image via Maldonado’s Facebook profile
