Performing arts teacher Susan Johnson
of South Lyon, Michigan has been suspended without pay for allowing a
student to play a gay-supportive song in her classroom.
Johnson allowed a student in her
performing arts class to play Seattle-based rapper Macklemore's
single Same Love from the upcoming album The Heist.
The song, which features singer Mary Lambert, follows the life of a
gay man and the life he built with his partner.
Johnson said she asked the student
whether the song included profanity or violence before allowing him
to play it for the class.
“This is one of the things in my
school that we're trying to practice and we're trying to instill in
our students is tolerance to diversity,” Johnson
told Fox 2 News.
Johnson received a three-day
suspension, two of which will not be paid.
“I don't think that it was really
even thought through,” she said. “I was paralyzed. I really
didn't understand why I was being suspended.”
The district described the song's
content of homosexuality, religion and politics as controversial. (A
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