Christian school gives volleyball coach ultimatum to either turn straight or resign

High School Volleyball
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Inoke Tonga — a gay volleyball coach at Valor Christian High School, a Christian private school in Highlands Ranch, Colorado — said the school’s administrators gave him a choice: renounce his homosexuality or resign from his position. He resigned and is now speaking out against the homophobia he faced.

Tonga had intended on spending a second season coaching volleyball at the school. But then his colleagues discovered an interview on his Facebook page that identified him as a gay man.

Related: School district’s lawyer argues “male-on-male incidents” shouldn’t be considered sexual assault

On Thursday, August 19, 2021, the school’s campus pastor and athletic director confronted him about the interview.

“They did say it was a danger to be in front of the kids,” Tonga tearfully told KUSA, an NBC News station in Denver. “And that to protect the kids I couldn’t be in front of them.”

The school gave him a choice, Tonga said: “Be gay, or admit that I wasn’t gay and that I was just having what they call ‘a spiritual battle.’ I had to denounce being a gay man, cut off any goals I had of marrying the love of my life, and delete the post and also accept their help of becoming a child of God.”

In a public Facebook post, he thanked God’s angels for helping him not break down and cry during the 1.5-hour conversation. The administrators allegedly told him that parents…

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