Gay teacher fired from Adventist school in Longwood that accepts state scholarships

Steven Arauz was viewed as a model foster and adoptive parent, a single dad who gave talks to foster-parenting classes and urged others at his Seventh-day Adventist church to help needy children, too.

Four years ago, the statewide Adventist organization put Arauz, a sixth-grade teacher at one of its Central Florida schools, and his newly adopted son on the cover of its magazine.

But on June 23, after Arauz did an interview for the online magazine Gays With Kids — an interview he hoped would help more children in Florida’s foster system find good homes — the school fired him.

“The irony is that, as Christians, we like to say, ‘Everyone belongs. Come as you are and follow Jesus,'” Arauz said. “But then if they find something they don’t agree with, you’re thrown out.”

Arauz also says his firing from Forest Lake Education Center in Longwood is unjust because the school accepts public money in the form of state scholarships and federal coronavirus aid.

The superintendent of Adventist schools in Florida emailed Arauz about the Gays With Kids article, noting it identified him as a “gay father” who was dating another man.

“You are aware that this conduct, if true, does not comport with the Seventh-day Adventist church’s standards and the education program at FLEC,” wrote Frank Runnels, superintendent of schools for the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, in an email Arauz shared with the Orlando Sentinel.

In a statement to the Sentinel on Tuesday, Runnels said Adventist teachers are part of the church’s ministry and “must teach, support and live in accordance with the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.” Arauz, he added, “breached this agreement” through his “conduct and advocacy.”

The Seventh-day Adventist church’s position is that “sexual intimacy” should take place only between a married man and woman. “The Bible makes no accommodation for homosexual activity or relationships,” its website says.

Forest Lake relied on state scholarships for at least 40% of its students last year, and those scholarships brought it nearly $1.7 million, according to the Florida Department of Education and Step Up For Students, which administers many of the state scholarships.

The conference, which runs Forest Lake and 29 other private schools, supports the scholarship programs that give parents state-backed vouchers to pay tuition. Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed a bill creating Florida’s fifth school voucher program at an Adventist school in Miami Gardens.

Arauz grew up in the Adventist church, graduated from an Adventist university in Tennessee and then taught for eight years in several Adventist schools in Central Florida.

He mostly kept his sexual orientation private, but he said many of his co-workers were aware.

“I’ve always been gay,” he said. “I always knew it wasn’t the safest place to be open about it.”

The Adventist church he belongs to has been welcoming.

“Our view has always been whomever Jesus decides to exclude, we’ll exclude them,” said Jeff Cinquemani, an associate pastor at WholeLife Church. “But we haven’t found anybody like that yet.”

Cinquemani said Arauz is a faithful church member and active in a group that tackles social-justice issues such as racism and human trafficking. “He’s a good teacher. I would trust him with my children,” he said.

Arauz became a foster parent at age 26, moved by a Bible verse about taking care of orphans, according to the story in Florida Focus, the Seventh-day Adventist magazine. He eventually adopted a 10-year-old boy — one of several foster children Arauz has taken in over the past five years. Arauz enrolled him at Forest Lake Education Center.

In 2018, Arauz was featured in a campaign to enlist more “nontraditional” foster and adoptive parents for kids in the state’s child-welfare system.

Arauz spoke about being a single foster parent and adoptive dad for articles in The New York Times, the Orlando Sentinel and Florida Focus. None of those stories identified him as gay.

“He has been a terrific foster parent. He has been a terrific adoptive parent,” said Glen Casel, president and CEO of Embrace Families, the region’s main child-welfare agency, which contracts with the state to manage adoption and foster care.

Joe Saunders, senior political director of the statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization Equality Florida, said Arauz’s firing underscores the need to ban discrimination at private schools receiving vouchers.

“Our position is that if you are a private school in Florida, you should not be discriminating against LGBTQ faculty or staff, and you shouldn’t be denying assets of the school to LGBTQ students,” he said. “But particularly if you are a voucher-funded school that is receiving public education dollars, you have an obligation to make sure that you’re open for all.”

Though some Democratic lawmakers have pushed the Florida Legislature to ban LGBTQ discrimination in schools that take state scholarships, those bills have not won support from Republicans, who dominate in both the House and Senate.

Florida’s scholarship law prohibits schools that take the vouchers from discriminating against students based on “race, color or national origin” but does not protect gay students. State law also does not protect LGBTQ people from employment discrimination.

In Florida last year, 156 private Christian schools with anti-gay views or policies educated more than 20,800 students with tuition paid for by state scholarships, an Orlando Sentinel investigation published in January found. At more than half those schools, students could be denied admission or expelled for being gay, and some refused to hire LGBTQ staff or to enroll children of gay parents.

None of the Seventh-day Adventist schools were on the Sentinel’s list, which was based on publicly available school handbooks, applications and other documents.

In addition to scholarship money, the Longwood school that fired Arauz received $82,700 in federal CARES Act money. The Florida conference, which says it educates 4,600 students statewide, also received from $350,000 to $1 million in forgivable loans under the federal Paycheck Protection Program, another pandemic relief effort, public records show.

“It’s incredibly upsetting that Steven’s employer used an article on our site, which we wrote to celebrate his selfless contributions to his community as a foster dad, as evidence in their decision to terminate his employment,” said David Dodge, executive editor of Gays With Kids, in an email.

Arauz said he is considering legal action, but it is unclear whether the termination of his $49,000-a-year contract can be successfully challenged. His firing came a little more than a week after June’s watershed U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held discrimination against gay and transgender workers illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Professor Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Miami School of Law, said the court makes an exemption for religious employers.

“They are immune from anti-discrimination suits brought by employees that can be considered ministers,” Corbin said. “And ministers are not limited to clergy.”

But whether religious institutions that receive taxpayer money can be held to a different standard, Corbin said, was not the focus of the recent ruling.

In his statement to the Sentinel, Runnels, the Adventist superintendent, said that Arauz, by advocating “positions in opposition to Seventh-day Adventist teachings” had “compromised his ability to minister to his students.”

This week, Arauz began a new job as director of community engagement at “From Outside In,” a nonprofit that provides fashionable, gently used clothing to disadvantaged youth to help them build confidence. His son is now taking classes online through the Orange County school district.

lpostal@orlandosentinel.com; ksantich@orlandosentinel.com