Hate pastor’s kid wins $101 in settlement after being sent home for wearing homophobic t-shirt

The daughter of a hate pastor who was sent home from school three years ago for wearing a t-shirt with an anti-LGBTQ+ message won $101 in a settlement with the school district over her First Amendment lawsuit.

In August 2020, Brielle Penkoski, daughter of pastor Rich Penkoski, wore a t-shirt to school that said “HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN” in large block letters and cited the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 in smaller print. That Bible passage is often interpreted as condemning pederasty and prostitution, but many conservative Christians believe it condemns LGBTQ+ people.

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He accused people of taking his words out of context because, he said, he’s not going to personally kill gay people.

Three years later, her family settled a lawsuit with the Overton County Board of Education for $101. The school board also agreed to have teachers go through First Amendment training but didn’t admit to any wrongdoing.

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“But Brielle got $100, which is way, way more than we thought she was going to get anyway out of this,” Rich Penkoski said in an email to the Christian Post. “The other part of this is all the teachers, at least from 2020, were told to start taking First Amendment courses, it was one of the things that I insisted on, that I wanted them to take First Amendment training courses.”

He added that he felt vindicated.

He was a party to the lawsuit when it was filed, but he was dropped from the suit when Brielle Penkoski turned 18.

According to her father, Brielle was sent to Principal Richard Melton, who sent the teen home because her shirt had a “sexual connotation.”

Rich Penkoski – who runs the group “Warriors for Christ,” which protests Drag Queen Story Hours and posts anti-LGBTQ videos to social media – said that the principal’s alleged reasoning was wrong because there’s a teacher at the school with a rainbow sticker that says, “Diverse, Inclusive, Accepting, Welcoming Safe Space For Everyone,” which he sees as a sexual message permitted by the school.

“They’ve got kids walking around with the pride symbol on their sneakers and pride clothing and nobody bats an eye,” he said in a 2020 interview. “But if a Christian comes up there and repeats what the Bible says, they are seen as intolerant, they are seen as hateful.”

Rich Penkoski is frequently outraged. In 2018, he was angry that his daughter was being taught some Arabic calligraphy at a different school in West Virginia.

“I saw the assignment of writing the Shahada in Arabic. Their excuse was calligraphy,” Rich Penkoski said at the time. “I was like, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ First of all, calligraphy was invented in China 3,000 years prior to Muhammad. The fact that they were trying to get my daughter to write that disturbed me.’”

Both the teacher and the school insisted that the activity was “optional,” but Rich Penkoski was still outraged, saying that the class’s unit on Christianity had “no Bible verses, no reciting the Ten Commandments or the Lord’s Prayer.”

In April 2023, an LGBTQ+ organization in Oklahoma got a restraining order against him after he allegedly threatened and harassed a lesbian couple.

In 2017, Rich Penkoski was outraged because his other daughter was shown a music video in school that portrayed the struggles of a Black, gay teen. He said the school should have “an opt-out form where I can choose to opt my children out of” seeing gay people.

He also claims that his seven-year-old son was given a flyer for a clinic that distributes birth control, which is just odd because what is a seven-year-old boy going to do with birth control? Rich Penkoski said that the flyer is evidence that the school is “trying to recruit kids, they’re trying to indoctrinate kids with liberal ideology, promoting sex and sexuality to kids.”