Utah County teacher fired for berating 5th grade student thankful for his adoptive gay dads

A substitute teacher at Deerfield Elementary School in Cedar Hills, Utah was fired after telling a fifth-grader who is soon to be adopted by two dads that being gay is “a sin.”

In a lesson the week before Thanksgiving, the unnamed sub had asked the students what they were thankful for. The 11-year-old boy said he was thankful for “finally being adopted by [his] two dads.”

“… I got choked up when he said it — he is thankful that he is finally being adopted by his two dads,” said Dancing with the Stars dancer Louis van Amstel in a video on social media.

But then the teacher began berating the boy, and in front of van Amstel by saying to the boy, “Why on Earth would you be happy about that?” and said, “That’s nothing to be thankful for.” She also told the class “homosexuality is wrong” and “two men living together is a sin,” The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The boy didn’t even want to speak up and get the teacher in trouble, but three classmates did, van Amstel said. The three girls reportedly tried to get her to stop berating him, and when she wouldn’t, they left the room to tell the principal. The teacher was then reportedly escorted out of the school while still arguing her point, and subsequently fired from Kelly Services Staffing.

Louis and Joshua, the school and the Alpine school district all express their gratitude to the students who followed their conscience and worked to end the substitute’s tirade.

A few days after the incident, the family’s neighbors decorated their house with paper hearts that said, “We love you” and “We support you.”

Louis and Joshua were in married in 2017, in Sundance, Utah. Louis just finished a season as a judge of the Dutch version of Dancing with the Stars.