EDITORIAL – Rejecting admin. shows county’s homophobia

Most of the time, school board votes concerning personnel decisions don’t draw a crowd of… Most of the time, school board votes concerning personnel decisions don’t draw a crowd of protesters. Most of the time, public officials take into account only the opinion of concerned administrators and parents when deciding to hire a new superintendent, and not that of said protesters. Then again, most of the time, the person whose candidacy is being debated isn’t openly gay.

But all of these things happened in central Pennsylvania, at a Central Dauphin School Board hearing on Monday. The board voted 5-4 not to hire Robert Pellicone, its leading candidate for a superintendent position, amid protests concerning Pellicone’s qualification for the job.

Among the protesters’ complaints: Pellicone was dismissed from a Beverly Hills, Calif., superintendent position because of allegations of fraud. What the people objecting to his election aren’t taking into account is that Pellicone sued the district for unfair firing — on the basis of the fact that he is, you guessed it, gay — and won. The district had to give him a hefty settlement and issued a letter that cleared him of the charges.

Nevertheless, those who opposed Pellicone’s hiring are having a bit of a memory lapse about the fact that Pellicone was found not guilty. Instead, they are holding him in double jeopardy, valuing the false accusations of a bigoted district above legal findings.

Of course, the board members who voted against Pellicone’s hiring denied that his orientation had anything to do with their decision not to hire him. However, a former school board member told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that he opposed appointing Pellicone because he “leads a lifestyle that … most of the community sees as morally offensive.”

Gee, thanks for your input, former-school-board-member guy, but what Pellicone does in his spare time is neither immoral nor illegal. At least the guy had the guts to admit that he was against hiring Pellicone because of his sexuality and didn’t cite some contrived excuse.

There are peripheral charges against Pellicone concerning a grade change made on a student’s math test while he worked as a superintendent in New York; surely, without the gay factor, these wouldn’t be enough to draw protests.

We could mention that, as superintendent, he would have little to no contact with the impressionable children whom these people think he’s so ready to corrupt. We could mention that most kids don’t care which way their superintendent swings, because most of them don’t want to even consider the possibility that old people have sex.

But that’s beside the point — the point is that the actions taken by these lovely Dauphin citizens demonstrate prejudice and bigotry of the worst kind. The mob’s objections reveal the worst in us: the ability to be swept up in a frenzy of hatred. Holding an innocent man guilty of a crime of which he was acquitted isn’t just crazy; it’s downright un-American.

Unfortunately, in the United States, it has become socially acceptable to hate gay people, so long as its hidden behind the thinnest veneer of an excuse. The bigots in Dauphin County took advantage of that, and now a qualified man cannot have his job because of this. With any luck, Pellicone will find a better district for which to work — one that learned the most basic kindergarten rule, and treats people the way it wants to be treated.