Questions arise about discrimination in religious schools
Modified: 5/9/2021 10:00:10 PM
MONTPELIER A spate of national and state-level court rulings have been clear: States, including Vermont, cannot discriminate against religious entities when doling out public subsidies, including taxpayer-funded school vouchers.
But can those schools then discriminate against their own students?
That question rose to the surface recently when former Vermont education secretary Rebecca Holcombe tweeted out a screenshot taken from the handbook of Grace Christian School, a religious institution located in Bennington. The small K-12 school’s “Statement of Faith” compares homosexuality to incest and bestiality, and states that “rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person.”
Jean Ruth Connolly
Ruth passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 102 on January 3, 2021, surrounded by her immediate family in Duxbury, Vt.
Ruth was born in 1918 in Saskatchewan, Canada, during the Spanish flu pandemic. Her father was a bank manager, and her mother was a schoolteacher. Ruth had two siblings, Helen and Gordon.
Ruth overcame many difficult challenges during her lifetime, starting with her turbulent childhood. After losing everything during the 1929 Depression, her parents divorced and the children were separated, growing up with different relatives. She gained independence, a sense of responsibility and maturity at an early age. Ruth met her future husband, Robert “Bob” Smith, while skiing just before he left for the Navy during World War II. Her adventurous spirit came out when she decided to join the war efforts. She was accepted by the Mechanized Transport Corps to become an ambulance driver in England. Rut
Damon Brink Damon Brink believed he had found a path to spiritual fulfillment, self-awareness and financial success. Days into his initial training with a mysterious group outside of Albany, N.Y., he had become captivated by its teachings. I didn t really want to leave, Brink recalled. At the end of the day, I was exhausted but happy happy in a way I hadn t been in years or maybe decades. That happiness would not last. Twelve years later, the Morrisville resident has found himself trapped in the undertow of the group, known as NXIVM (pronounced NEX-ee-um) and widely described as a cult.
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