Pro-family views cost ex-Marine a superintendent job in Berkeley
BERKELEY, September 19, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A former Marine’s views about the sanctity of marriage have cost him a job as superintendent of schools in Berkeley, California.
Dr. Edmond Heatley withdrew after it became known he supported marriage.
Dr. Edmond Heatley, who is African-American, had already been selected as the final candidate and resigned his position as a superintendent in Georgia when news broke that in 2008 he supported Proposition 8, a pro-marriage state ballot initiative adopted by California voters that November.
“The Berkeley School Board is engaging in blatant viewpoint discrimination by declining to hire an otherwise well-qualified candidate for School Superintendent, just because he supported Prop 8,” Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, the founder of The Ruth Institute, wrote in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.
Local media found a copy of a memo Dr. Heatley wrote when he led the Chino Valley Unified School District, which opposes “the Court’s recent redefinition of marriage” and declares “the ideal learning environment for children is within a nurturing home governed jointly by a mother and a father as primary educators of their children.”
The school board unanimously passed the resolution two months before Proposition 8 prevailed statewide.
Although another school board member, Michael Calta, claimed to have authored the resolution, Dr.
This is the second time the board has failed to failed a successor to outgoing superintendent Bill Huyett, who quit as leader of the 9,400-student district over the summer.
“The school board is so hostile to traditional marriage that they are willing to pay $30,000 to a professional headhunting firm, and an extra $12,000 per month until they can find a superintendent they consider acceptable,” Dr. Morse told LifeSiteNews. “I wonder what the taxpayers and parents think about that.”
Some denizens of the famously liberal city do not seem to mind the post is vacant, as long as it is not held by someone who believes in traditional values.
One homosexual parent told local media, “Bringing someone on who doesn’t value my family structure…would divide our community at large and support divisiveness.” Berkeley United Schools adopted the “Welcoming Schools” curriculum created by the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual lobbying organization, in 2010.
Some also criticized the fact that Dr. Heatley was trained at The Broad Superintendent’s Academy, an institution geared toward those from a non-educational background, and taught school for only two years.
Berkeley School Board member Leah Wilson said his time at Broad should not be an issue.
“There are legitimate concerns here,” Wilson said, “but in our liberalism and self-righteousness we can become myopic ourselves.”
