Why should I provide my email address?

Start saving money today with our FREE daily newsletter packed with the best FREE and bargain Kindle book deals. We will never share your email address!
Sign Up Now!

Nicholas Sparks backtracks, apologizes to the LGBTQ community, silent on race remarks.

Romance writer Nicholas Sparks issued an apology on Monday for remarks he made in 2013 opposing the formation of an LGBT club at his Christian school. Gene Maddaus from Variety has the statement from Sparks’ camp:

In an email published last week by the Daily Beast, Sparks faulted Saul Benjamin, who was then the headmaster of the Epiphany School of Global Studies, for pushing an “agenda that strives to make homosexuality open and accepted.” Sparks forbade Benjamin from allowing the LGBT club, and criticized him in harsh terms for focusing on diversity and the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

“As someone who has spent the better part of my life as a writer who understands the power of words, I regret and apologize that mine have potentially hurt young people and members of the LGBTQ community, including my friends and colleagues in that community,” Sparks said in a statement on Monday.

In the statement, Sparks said he did not intend to ban an LGBT club outright — but rather to ensure that any club was formed in accordance with the school’s procedures.

“When in one of my emails I used language such as ‘there will never be an LGBT club’ at Epiphany, I was responding heatedly to how the headmaster had gone about initiating this club — like most schools, Epiphany has procedures and policies for establishing any student club,” he said. “My concern was that if a club were to be founded, it be done in a thoughtful, transparent manner with the knowledge of faculty, students and parents — not in secret, and not in a way that felt exceptional. I only wish I had used those exact words.”

That is not what he communicated to the headmaster in 2013. His exact words were: “In thinking long and hard, with an open heart, about this topic, and after discussions with Trustees and others, I have to conclude that the [Board of Trustees] will not sanction a club or association for GLBT students, no matter what it is called.” He said that gay students would continue to be welcome at the school, and that the school would not tolerate harassment of them.

In another email, Sparks told Benjamin that the previous headmaster had worked with LGBT students and handled the issue “quietly and wonderfully.” “I expect you to do the same,” he wrote.

Read full post on Variety.

Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap