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WATCH: Kansas Teacher Asked to Resign for Showing Pro-LGBT Antibullying Film

WATCH: Kansas Teacher Asked to Resign for Showing Pro-LGBT Antibullying Film

loveisallyouneedthemovie.com

A social studies teacher has been placed on leave and asked to resign after showing a pro-gay antibullying film after students made homophobic remarks in class.

Tom Leahy, a middle school social studies teacher in Conway Springs, Kan., has been placed on administrative leave and asked to resign after he showed an antibullying film in class. The film "upset too many people," Leahy told The Wichita Eagle.

Conway Springs Superintendent Clay Murphy confirmed that Leahy had been placed on leave, but would not comment on why or whether the teacher had been asked to resign. Leahy had already planned to retire after this school year.

"He's on leave, and that's about all I can tell you. He's not in the classroom right now," Murphy said.

Leahy screened Love Is All You Need, a short film that went viral on YouTube in 2011, to three eighth-grade history classes last month as a lesson on tolerance. The movie portrays a heterosexual girl raised in a world where everyone else is homosexual. The girl is bullied into suicide at the end of the film.

A few days after showing the movie in class, Leahy was summoned to the principal's office and told that parents were complaining about the film's graphic ending. Leahy did not get permission from school administrators to screen the movie and did not send home a permission slip for parents who could have refused to allow their child to watch the film.

"Yeah, it was a little rough. I get it. But shoot, these kids play video games that are decapitating people," Leahy told The Wichita Eagle. "I didn't want just a dorky little film. I wanted something that was important, something that was serious. So that's the one I came up with."

Leahy's last day in the classroom was October 21. He began cleaning out his classroom over the weekend.

"There are people who don't want their children in my classroom. I thought that I'd take a little time off and then come back, and people would cool their heels and everything would be better. That didn't happen," he said. "I don't hold grudges against anybody. I think it got out of hand, and the people in charge had to do what they had to do.

"I'm just - I don't know what the word is - sad, disappointed."

Watch the film that cost Leahy his job, below, and scroll down to watch a report from Witchita TV station KAKE.

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