Kansas teacher asked to resign for showing LGBT anti-bullying video

A Kansas middle school teacher is being asked to resign after being placed on administrative leave for showing his classes “Love is All You Need,”a short film with an anti-bullying message, The Wichita Eagle reports. The film takes place in a world where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuals face discrimination for being straight.

Tom Leahy, who teaches social studies at Conway Springs Middle School in Conway Springs Kansas, said he was prompted to show the film to his eighth-graders after a disturbing occurrence during one of his lessons. Leahy asked the students to divide into fictional colonies and create their own Bill of Rights as part. He was surprised to see one group ban homosexuals from their colony.

“I was expecting fairly positive kinds of colonies: ‘Do things we think are right, and be nice.’ But it just kind of got twisted around, and it became a place where certain people weren’t allowed,” Leahy said.

The next day, he showed “Love is All You Need” to his students as a lesson of tolerance.

“I didn’t want just a dorky little film,” Leahy said. “I wanted something that was important, something that was serious. So that’s the one I came up with.”

A few days later, Leahy was called in to the principal’s office. Parents had complained about the graphic nature of the suicide depicted at the end of the film (Leahy had shown the film without first sending parents a permission slip with the option for their child to opt out of the screening). His last day in his classroom was Oct. 21.

“I’m not saying what I did was very smart. It really wasn’t,” he said. “But I’m a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy, and it seemed right at the time.”