The greatest threat to school choice is a small Christian academy in Jupiter, Fla., where the anti-gay obsessions of the Christian right have resulted in the kind of Christian wrong that could convince everybody that vouchers just won't work.

Jeffrey Woodard, for the three years he attended Jupiter Christian School, was viewed as an inoffensive, if unremarkable, young man. In August, according to the civil complaint, Jeffrey was pulled out of class by high school chaplain Todd Bellhorn.

W. Trent Steele, Woodard's lawyer, says the conversation went this way: Bellhorn told Woodard their conversation would be confidential. He then said, "I heard a rumor that you were a homosexual and you were planning to publicly come out of the closet this year." Woodard, according to Steele, said "Yes, I am a homosexual, but it is not correct that I am planning on coming out."

Bellhorn, according to Steele, then informed Woodard that he was taking the matter to the school's administration.

The following Sunday, presumably after some edifying prayer, Woodard and his mother, Carol Gload, were summoned to a meeting with school president Richard Grimm.

According to Woodard's court complaint, Grimm informed him that he had three choices: attend sexual "reorientation" classes to, rather literally, straighten him out; withdraw from school; be expelled.

Shortly afterward, Woodard was expelled. The expulsion was entered into his permanent record and any college that reviews Woodard's application will have no idea that he was thrown out of school because he is gay. Jupiter's student handbook says students may be summarily expelled only for bringing a weapon to school, threatening someone at school or committing a felony.

Unless he gets a letter in his permanent record explaining why he was cast out, colleges could reasonably infer they have an applicant with a dangerous past.

The potentates of Jupiter Christian have maintained a steady silence, other than to deny that they "outed" Woodard. Of course they didn't. They forced Woodard to out himself because the only way he could fight this wrong was in a breach-of-contract suit in which he had to, because of the nature of the complaint, reveal to the world that he is gay.

Under Florida law, a private school may, if it wishes, discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Presumably, because these academies are private undertakings, they may discriminate however they please. But Jupiter Christian orbits within the solar system of Florida's school voucher program. Florida leads the nation in innovative ways to opt out of failing public schools. One of them is a program called the McKay scholarships, a voucher system for students with disabilities. Jupiter Christian accepts such vouchers, which come with the proviso that Jupiter not discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin.

What Jupiter's recent ejection of a 17-year-old gay student, apparently tracked down for interrogation, suggests is that public dollars that would otherwise go to a public school system that is not allowed to discriminate, instead find their way into the coffers of one that has fused cruelty and sanctimony in a living sculpture of intolerance.

That is Jupiter Christian's right as a private institution. But it adds special urgency to the question of how states can direct public dollars to private schools without trampling on the basic premise that a society ought to be tolerant and inclusive. Forty years ago, "Christian" schools sprang up in the South as segregation academies. Today, we threaten to create new segregation academies by funding schools that have declared new categories of outcasts.

Many students would like public tax dollars made available for a religiously based education, but doing so without cordoning off an entire class of people seems an elusive goal.

"There's a larger question of how much autonomy you want these private schools to have. Just because they're accepting a voucher doesn't mean they should have to become a public school and do everything a public school has to do," said Dennis Giorno, director of the REACH Alliance, the Harrisburg group lobbying for public funds for private schools.

This, then, would move a segment of education from the realm of civil rights to contract law. That's why Woodard, age 17, had to file suit for breach of contract, because the school's handbook did not warn him in advance that being gay was an offense worthy of expulsion. For that matter, the school officials have so far refused to put into writing the reasons for their action. Imagine a government bureaucracy that believes it is guided by God and you get some idea of what it must be like dealing with these people.

The public school system in many cities has become less school than system and requires repairs on a monumental scale. It would be irrational to rule out the competitive advantages of school choice as a potential incentive for public schools to improve performance. But while flexibility is needed, not every beam in the new structure can safely bend.

States considering vouchers or tax credits or any other system that puts public education dollars outside the system must make certain that the schools suddenly eating at our trough are precluded from dining on their students as well. School choice that merely puts education dollars in places a student cannot take advantage of them -- be it because he is gay or black or, for that matter, a Christian -- is farce masquerading as virtue.

Before voting on "school choice" in Pennsylvania any time in the future, lawmakers had better make sure it's a choice available to everybody. If we cannot reform the system without handing money to cruel bigots, we should let it remain broken.

Dennis Roddy is a Post-Gazette columnist(droddy@post-gazette.com

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