On Friday May 16, the San Francisco Chronicle reported “S.F. girl booted from yearbook for wearing tux.” The article began “Students at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory School in San Francisco came to campus Friday wearing bow ties and ties in solidarity with a classmate whose picture was omitted from the Catholic school’s yearbook because she wore a tuxedo for her senior portrait.”

The student in question is Jessica Urbina, aged 18. the Chronicle continued “Jessica’s tuxedo went against an archdiocese of San Francisco policy forcing female students to wear dresses in yearbook photos, officials said. In a statement, the school suggested it would seek to change the policy.”

The story received wide coverage in the anti-Catholic mass media. It was picked up by NBC News, Fox News, the Huffington Post, the New York Daily News and others. On Monday May 19, the Daily News reported:

“Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco released a humbling public apology to Jessica Urbina and her family Monday which they stated was in ‘no way meant to excuse our actions.’ The apology, which vows to be more open toward gay and lesbian students, came on the heels of a firestorm online and in the classroom over their decision to leave out the 18-year-old’s photo.”

Humbling indeed: the school’s president, John Scudder, and principal, Gary Cannon, issued an 1100-plus word letter apologizing for enforcing their own policy. Despite its length, content was short: it was not an explanation but instead an exercise in grovelling before the powerful. The closest the letter came to an explanation was:

“As in past school years, any senior who sat for senior portraits but did not conform to the dress code did not have a portrait included in the portrait pages of the yearbook. Given the nature of this specific case, however, we believe that decision, while conforming with our policy, was wrong.”

But just why the policy of having young women wear dresses and young men wear tuxedos is wrong was not explained, or even addressed. The school’s letter referred to the 1997 document Always our Children, issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Robert Reilly, in his recently released Making Gay Okay:  How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything, has documented how the acceptance of inverted sexuality necessitates an inversion of reality and even logic. Sacred Heart’s behavior bears this out.

Urbina’s brother, Michael Urbina, who claims to be an alumnus of Sacred Heart, tweeted the statement “SHC, please explain to me why MY SISTER cannot receive the same treatment as every other student? Why Sacred Heart Cathedral?”

The full “letter of apology” may be read here.

To contact Gary Cannon, the SHCP Principal: gcannon@shcp.edu 415.775.6626 ext. 859

To contact John F. Scudder, SHCP’sPresident: jscudder@shcp.edu 415.775.6626 ext. 716