Sunnie Kahle's family received a letter from her school principal explaining that she will be refused enrollment next year — unless she learns to "follow suit with her God-ordained identity."
The letter expressed concern that Sunnie isn't conforming to Timberlake Christian's gender identity expectations. Her grandparents, who adopted and raised her, took Sunnie out of the school after the administration made it clear she wasn't welcome.
Sunnie has short hair. She enjoys wearing sneakers and playing sports. She also "cries when she comes home because she wants to go back to Timberlake Christian with her friends," her grandmother Doris Thompson told WSET 13 News.
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Timberlake Christian School principal reminded the Kahle family in a letter that TCS can refuse enrollment to any student condoning "sexual immorality; practicing homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity; promoting such practices; or otherwise having the inability to support the moral principles of the school." Given the fact that children don't even reach sexual maturity until an average age of 10 to 17, TCS goes beyond other Christian schools' efforts to curb homosexuality to policing the performance of gender itself.
As Sunnie's grandmother asked WSET 13, "How do you label a child, 8 years old, or discriminate against an 8-year-old child? It just don't happen. How do you tell a child when she wants to wear pants and shirt, and go out and play in the mud and so forth, how do you tell her, 'No you can't. You've got to wear a pink bow in your hair and you've got to let your hair grow out long.' How do you do that? I can't do that." --Monica Nickelsburg
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