Principal Resigns Amid Outcry Over Antigay School Assembly

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a gay student at Dunkerton High School in Dunkerton Iowa, where you’re well-known, but extremely unpopular to say the least.

Now, imagine in a very different moment you’re Mike Cooper, the principal of Dunkerton High, who not long ago decided to hire Junkyard Prophet on the assumption that the very conservative Christian metal/rap band (whoa?) might know how to conduct a school assembly on bullying and the dangers of drug abuse. You would think, right?

Such an idea might have sounded like a good idea to you then, if temporarily, until that very conservative Christian metal/rap band took their very conservative Christian ideologies to Dunkerton High's stage this past Thursday.

There, as if adolescence isn’t already hard enough, Dunkerton students were subjected to disturbing images of AIDS patients and abortions, while learning about why god really hates homosexuals, pre-marital sex and any resemblance of a separation between church and state. Though all of this is not surprising since Junkyard Prophet Band members belong to the extremely homophobic Minnesota organization, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, which was recently designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Nonetheless, when the backlash from concerned parents started to roll in, it was apparently too much for Principal Cooper to bear. Yesterday, he resigned amid the controversy over Junkyard Phrophet’s appearance, for which they were paid $1,500 in taxpayer money. Still, Dunkerton Superintendent Jim Stanton contends that Cooper’s decision—quoting the AP—“is not related to Cooper’s recommendation that the district invited the band Junkyard Prophet to perform at last week’s assembly, and said the plan had been ‘in the works’ for nearly a month.”

Why these concerned parents would believe Stanton's statement, however, is way beyond me, given how not one single teacher or school official intervened.

"They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren't virgins," said parent Jennifer Littlefield—whose daughter walked out of the assembly in tears—as reported by the Associated Press.

"They told these kids that anyone who was gay was going to die at the age of 42.” Littlefield continued. “It just blows me away that no one stopped this."

The AP has more on Dunkerton High School and the homophobic Junkyard Prophet band here.

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