The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a lawsuit against Mississippi Moss Point School District in an effort to stop the alleged anti-gay bullying by faculty and staff of a student. Seventeen-year-old Destin Holmes, a lesbian, has been repeatedly harassed and subjected to slurs since she attended Magnolia Junior High School.
At one point, the bullying got so bad Holmes was homeschooled for a year. Holmes left the junior high school last year after the then principal reportedly called her a "pathetic fool" and told her "I don't want a dyke in this school." When homeschool became too expensive for the family, Holmes transferred to Moss Point High School, where the harassment began again.
"I deserve to go to school where students, and especially the teachers, don’t always call me names," Holmes said in the SPLC release announcing the lawsuit. "The district should have protected me and made sure I was learning, like the rest of the kids. Instead, the students, teachers and even principal, called me names. It shouldn’t have happened to me, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone else."
Watch Holmes talk about the harassment below.
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