Gay Student Punished For Supporting Gay Marriage

Gay Marriage Legalized in DC; Oral Roberts Drops Dead (Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com)

A student at Fullerton Union High School, near Los Angeles, who was taking part in their “Mr. Fullerton” competition, was asked by the judges what he hoped for in the future. When he replied that he hoped to find a partner and get married if gay marriage were legal, his assistant principal pulled him off the stage.

Back in the Closet, Faggot

District officials criticized the assistant principal this week because the "matter was not handled appropriately." According to the Los Angeles Times, Superintendent George J. Giokaris said that the "matter should have been handled privately."

The “matter,” of course, was coming out publicly and condoning gay marriage, which apparently are forbidden in Fullerton. The district seemingly has no problem with disciplining a child for such transgressions, so long as it isn’t done publicly.

Later this week, after receiving the student’s consent, the assistant principal made a public apology to the student and acknowledged that he had handled the situation inappropriately. However, it is not clear whether the AP said anything in the public address about the legitimacy of gay love and relationships or apologized for his or her homophobia.

Free Speech Victory For Teen Girls

A judge has ruled in favor of two girls who had been punished by their school for posting suggestive pictures on MySpace during the summer (Daily Mail Reporter). U.S District Judge Philip Simon ruled that an Indiana school district violated the girls’ First Amendment rights by punishing them for posting sexually suggestive photos on MySpace. However, he delayed his decision on whether to award damages while awaiting a ruling in a difference case before the 7th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana had filed a lawsuit on behalf of the teens in October 2009, claiming the district improperly banned the girls from extracurricular activities even though their behavior had not involved the school. Furthermore, the school humiliated the girls by forcing them to apologize to an all-male coaches' board and then required them to undergo counseling [for their own good?] after the photographs were circulated at school.

Schools may punish students for activities that occur outside of school if they can prove that the actions were disruptive to the school or posed a danger to its staff or students, according to a Supreme Court ruling. In this case, the girls had reason to believe that their actions would never be discovered by the school as the privacy settings on their MySpace pages had been set so that only their friends could see the photos.

While the girls hopefully learned a valuable lesson about trust (and who not to) as well as the risks of posting anything onto the internet, even with supposed security protections, they certainly should not have been punished for their actions, especially not by their school.

The school’s actions against the girls occurred after a parent, who obtained copies of the photos (from one of the trusted friends?) showed them to school Superintendent Steve Darnell and complained they were disrupting the volleyball team. The principal then suspended the girls from volleyball, choir and cheerleading for the year.

Even if the volleyball team was disrupted by gossip or name-calling stemming from the incident, it is the problem of the entire team and the coach. If the team was “disrupted” by their participation in an unpopular political protest or because they dressed like goths, the school would have been much less likely to punish the girls, because our society has zero tolerance for overt expressions of teenage sexuality.

Indeed, the overreaction by the school and the district reflect the irrational, Puritanical and teen-sex-phobic values that are so common in U.S. culture. The school’s athletic code even states explicitly that students may be punished for behavior on or off campus that disrupts the “moral” environment on campus.

Teens do think about sex. Some of them even have sex and usually without catching STDs or getting pregnant. In fact, unplanned pregnancy rates among teens are at an all-time low and are much lower than the unplanned pregnancy rates for women in the 30s and 40s.

The courts refreshingly brought a level of sanity back to the discourse, with Judge Simon saying that the photographs were not obscene under Indiana law and were intended to be humorous. He also ruled that the district's discipline policy was ‘so vague and overbroad as to violate the Constitution.

Thousands of L.A. Students Walk Out, Protest Mass Teacher Firings

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) issued over 7,000 pink slips to teachers and support staff (around 5,000 just for teachers) in order to close a $408 million budget gap. Thousands of students walked out of class today across the city to protest the layoffs and to send a message to legislators to start fund schools adequately.

Hundreds of students walked at Belvedere Middle School in East L.A., according to KTLA. They had also gotten petitions signed and wrote letters to the district. Students walked at Manual Arts High, as well as at Estaban Torres High, in East. L.A. Over 3,000 students were expected to walk out of Hamilton High School, according to Mike Klonsky, who also happens to be an alumnus there. Students carried with picket signs and “Save Hami” T-shirts. According to a statement made by Hamilton students,

“This is not a school wide "Ditch Day." We are walking out not to avoid our classrooms, but to save them. To protest the terrible budget cuts our school could face. To protest the 22 pink slips handed out to our beloved teachers, to protest the potential closure of our school library. We are walking out to protest the increase of class sizes by 50% or more. And we will walk out to stop our magnets from facing a 90% loss in funding.”

Gay Agenda or Teaching Tolerance?

In a move that has pissed off religious conservatives, California state senator Mark Leno (Democrat from San Francisco) proposed a bill in December that would require textbooks to include gay history and portray it “in a positive light.” With all the recent media coverage of bullying and gay suicides, the time would seem ripe for this bill. However, homophobic parents and religious leaders are vowing to fight it.

In 2008, a lesbian student at Jesse Bethel High School in Vallejo, California, filed suit with the American Civil Liberties Union accusing the local school district of discrimination. As part of the settlement, administrators recently agreed to show films and assign homework depicting same-sex families, starting with elementary school-aged students.

In November parents and religious leaders attacked the school board for “pushing their gay agenda” on their innocent children, irate that their kids would be forced to hear such terrible words as “gay” and “lesbian,” all paid for by their tax dollars. However, Leno’s legislation does not call for any curriculum related to sexuality or sex education. Rather, it is more akin to requiring an accurate and sympathetic portrayal of African American or female historical figures.

Many parents believe they have the right to control everything their children hear or experience, a notion that is both ludicrous and unhealthy. There is no way to prevent a child from hearing the word lesbian and why try? It won’t stop a child from becoming gay or cause a straight kid to suddenly convert. It encourages ignorance, fear and bigotry. But if parents really are so concerned, then they need to place their kids in a private parochial school or home school them, and not expect the rest of the world to roll over for them. The job of public schools is to help children understand reality, not to shelter them from it. We don’t ignore the Holocaust, slavery, genocide of Native Americans or Japanese internment simply because they are painful or difficult to discuss (though history textbooks have done a remarkable job of obfuscating these events).

In the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), teachers introduce words like “gay” and “heterosexual,” beginning in kindergarten. At Mission High School in SFUSD, there are school assemblies to honor Gay Pride Month. There are now 4,000 Gay-Straight Alliance clubs across the nation. Many schools have also performed the Laramie Project, a play about Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming who was killed in a homophobic attack.