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Feral
Post subject: Gay Straight Alliances  PostPosted: Mar 09, 2007 - 08:36 AM



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Gay students create safe haven at school

Quote:
EAST GREENBUSH -- When high school student Helena Echandy came out as a lesbian, she mostly spent time with her closest friends, cautious about dealing with the public at large.

Now the 19-year-old senior at Columbia High School is a gay-rights activist and a member of her school's new Gay-Straight Alliance.

fter months of existing as an unsanctioned club, the GSA received approval from the East Greenbush school district's Board of Education this year. The group was founded by 18-year-old senior Brittany Shoup, who got the idea when she began dating a girl who was the president of Troy High School's GSA.

....

High school principal John Sawchuk said the GSA was the next logical step for improving tolerance within the school.

"It was formed under the concept of building tolerance and understanding, and I think it does that," he said.


Nice... no drama to speak of, no cranky gay lawyers, no law suits, no costly settlements... just better adjusted gay kids.

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Mar 09, 2007 - 08:45 AM



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skookum. Smile

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Mar 10, 2007 - 01:59 PM



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Utah Governor signs bill aimed at discouraging GSAs

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Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed a bill Friday that would require parental consent for students to join non-curricular clubs such as gay-straight alliances and allow schools to deny a club application if leaders thought it necessary to "protect the physical, emotional and moral well-being of students."

[...]

"There were prior versions of the bill that he would have vetoed. However, this legislation simply codifies items already in state board rules," said Mike Mower, the governor's spokesman. "It also makes clear that it is not targeting any one club or organization.

"The seventh substitute HB236 ensures parents will have the right to approve of any school club or organization their child participates in," Mower said.

[...]

Margaret Plane, legal counsel for ACLU of Utah, said she was disappointed with Huntsman's decision. "The language, it's ambiguous enough that some schools may view it as permission to ban clubs they or their community find to be controversial. Under the Equal Access Act, that's not permissible," she said. "(If a district does that) the state will be responsible for defending a lawsuit for which potentially they shouldn't have had to."

[...]

Opponents, including the state Board of Education, called the bill unnecessary since school districts had their own policies regarding non-curricular clubs. And some said the Legislature was micromanaging districts.

But Tilton said the law will highlight parental rights. "We now have a statement -- not just in policy but in statute -- saying parents' rights are paramount."


I hope there is a *flurry* of lawsuits, that ends up costing the state millions.

Oh, and by the way -- how long do you figure it will be before Tilton is unmasked as a child molester, or a dog-fucker, or something similar? That sort of thing seems to be all the rage in Republican circles, lately.

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vanrozenheim
Post subject:   PostPosted: Mar 10, 2007 - 08:29 PM
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'berto wrote:
Oh, and by the way -- how long do you figure it will be before Tilton is unmasked as a child molester, or a dog-fucker, or something similar?


But he already participates in the child abuse initiated by Utah's legislators. What they basically have done is they denied the creation of safe spaces for students who need them most - the gay kids of stoneage religious fanatics. These gay kids are intimidated and mind-stifled at home, and the only place they had to get some more breathe was outside the parental control at school. The consequences? Hunted into a corner, besiedged from all sides, these kids see no way out -- and commit suicide. The bunch of child abusers goes unpunished: "Better dead than Gay".
 
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Feral
Post subject:   PostPosted: Mar 15, 2007 - 08:44 PM



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Gay-straight alliance gets official recognition at Madera school

Quote:
MADERA – A club for gay and straight students that was refused official status at Madera High School will be sponsored by the school after all, according to the American Civil Liberties Union .

The ACLU negotiated with Madera school officials on behalf of 10 students who had sought official recognition for the Gay-Straight Alliance, which is designed to give students a place to discuss lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues.


When the kids applied for club status early in 2005, the schoold told them all clubs had to be approved by the district... a process that can take six months. Sounds mighty fishy to me, but there you have it. A year later the kids were allowed to meet on campus, but not as a school-sponsored club, and so could not make announcements or post bulletins.

Yah. You just know the ACLU hopped on this one. The group now has the school's full sponsorship. Good for the kids. I think it's more than a little pathetic that it took nearly 2 years for them to get what is owed them under the federal Equal Access Act.

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Mar 20, 2007 - 11:30 AM



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Florida judge rejects bid to derail gay student lawsuit

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(Okeechobee) A federal judge has rejected a motion by the Okeechobee County school board to dismiss a lawsuit by high school students who were prevented from organizing a Gay-Straight Alliance on campus.

U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore's ruling means that the lawsuit can go forward.

[...]

David Gibbs, the lawyer for the school board, said that the case is not about gay rights but about allowing discussion of sex at a high school. According to Gibbs the GSA is a "sex-based club."

Gibbs said that the Equal Access Act can't be used in the case of a GSA and furthermore Florida law requires schools to teach abstinence, "while teaching the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage."


Funny how every single court case so far has repudiated the repeated contention by bigots that "the Equal Access Act can't be used in the case of a GSA" -- it most certainly can, it has, and I have no doubts that it will once again in this case. And if Gibbs is really so concerned about "discussion of sex at a high school", then he'd better go after all that flagrant discussing of abstinence and "teaching the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage".

Of course, it's all bullshit, and the Okeechobee County school board will lose its case, after pointlessly wasting all kinds of money trying to justify its bigotry. The kids will get their GSA, the bigots will whine about "activist judges", and the ACLU will once again be under-appreciated as thousands of homos flock to give their money to useless Democratic shills like HRC.

You heard it here first! Wink

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Feral
Post subject:   PostPosted: Mar 20, 2007 - 08:31 PM



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This is a small victory, but a welcome one. A motion to dismiss is evaluated on the basis of the sufficiency of the plaintiffs' complaint, not the merits of the case. In such considerations, the plaintiff's complaint is viewed in the most favorable possible terms and the plaintiff's allegations of fact are assumed to be true.

The ruling can be read here (should you like reading such things).

The chief issue was whether or not the unincorporated GSA is a "person" under the law. There have been cases (and the School Board's lawyers dutifully brought them to the court's attention) where a plaintiff did not have standing to sue because the party simply was not a "person" under the laws in question.

The GSA has been ruled to satisfy a great many reasonable standards, so may bring suit on this issue in court.

The kids' next hurdle will be their own motion for a temporary injunction. That sort of motion is judged by a much different standard -- whether the plaintiff is likely to prevail.

My guess is that this case will be settled out of court before that point. Now that the Principal's qualified immunity is no longer in question (a tricky thing, holding adults personally responsible for their conduct), I see very little prospect that the kids will lose and the likelihood that they will prevail is very high indeed. The law on this matter is quite clear and the courts have spoken on it time and time again.

The ACLU's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project is a worthy recipient of gay support.

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 01, 2007 - 05:18 PM



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The new face of gay activism: younger, politically aware... and often straight

Quote:
... Young people, some barely in their teens, are becoming the gay rights movement's newest ambassadors at statehouses from Olympia, Wash., to Montpelier, Vt. Their advocacy, unheard of as recently as a decade ago, reflects the slowly growing acceptance that is emboldening gays and lesbians to come out of the closet while they are coming of age.

[...]

Veteran activists credit the political participation of gay youth, their straight friends and children of same-sex parents with a string of recent legislative victories, including last month's passage of an anti-bullying bill that provides specific protections for gay and lesbian students in Iowa.

The law's adoption came after the Iowa Pride Network issued a report saying more than 83 percent of the state's gay, lesbian and transgender students said they had been verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation.

"We kept getting comments from legislators of 'There aren't gay kids in Iowa, this is an East and West Coast problem,'" said Ryan Roemerman, the network's director.

The group also arranged a news conference attended by Iowa's lieutenant governor and three students who provided firsthand accounts of discrimination. They included a girl who was kicked out of her Catholic high school after she came out as a lesbian and another who said she wasn't allowed into the locker room to change with other girls.

Brad Anderson, spokesman for Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, said the organized lobbying effort, which also included a 1,000-person rally at Drake University, was "absolutely critical" in getting the legislation approved.

"They added a loud voice, just physically being in the Capitol, and you saw them working all hours of the day lobbying to get this stuff passed," Anderson said.

[...]

Yet the most effective spokespeople are not necessarily gay youth, but the straight students who joined with them to form more than 2,500 high school gay-straight alliance clubs across the country since the early 1990s.

Carolyn Lamb, director of California's Gay-Straight Alliance Network, estimates that up to 40 percent of the 400 high school and college students bused to Sacramento last week for Queer Youth Advocacy Day were not gay, lesbian or transgender.

"Most of the adult-driven (gay) civil rights work doesn't have such large numbers of straight allies who see it as a civil rights cause," she observed.

While previous generations waited well into adulthood before identifying themselves as gay, the average age at which gay children came out to friends and families in 2005 was 13 years and 4 months, according to Caitlin Ryan, a San Francisco State University researcher.

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Feral
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 01, 2007 - 09:29 PM



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Quote:
Carolyn Lamb, director of California's Gay-Straight Alliance Network, estimates that up to 40 percent of the 400 high school and college students bused to Sacramento last week for Queer Youth Advocacy Day were not gay, lesbian or transgender.


It's certainly an interesting observation. Who can quibble with an "estimate"?

Oh, ME.

Two hundred forty of the youths bused to Sacramento last week for Queer Youth Advocacy Day were gay, lesbian, or transgender and 160 of them were none of the above? Shall I point out that Ms Lamb has conveniently dropped the 'B' from GLBT? How many of this estimated 40% were bi then... some of them, most of them, all of them? Probably not all, and likely not most. It is, I suppose, too much to hope for even anecdotal data on the orientation of these people, so I'm going to hold off on giving any credence to the notion that 40% of the participants were straight.

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vanrozenheim
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 01, 2007 - 11:30 PM
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Feral wrote:
It's certainly an interesting observation. Who can quibble with an "estimate"?

Quote:
Yet the most effective spokespeople are not necessarily gay youth, but the straight students who joined with them to form more than 2,500 high school gay-straight alliance clubs across the country since the early 1990s.


Oh, in principle there would be nothing wrong with straight people becoming strong supporters of gay rights - there are indeed many homosexuals who are the most fervent defenders of family values. So the straight youth is certainly welcome to help their gay friends to get the legal rights they deserve. This does not change anything in Feral's very valid argumentation that the "B" in the letter soup was likely omitted on purpose.

I have more doubts about the following statement:

Quote:
While previous generations waited well into adulthood before identifying themselves as gay, the average age at which gay children came out to friends and families in 2005 was 13 years and 4 months, according to Caitlin Ryan, a San Francisco State University researcher.
Emphasis is mine.

The average age is usually statistically calculated from the weighted coming out ages below and above the average value -- now tell me how many 12-year-olds you need to outweight all the folks who come out with 17 years or with 21 years? Frankly, I doubt strongly that "13 years and 4 months" is a correct value for gay people... unless one purposefully cuts off everybody who is too old to count as "child".

Caitlin Ryan has co-authored a 175-page book "Lesbian and Gay Youth" (ISBN-13: 978-0231111911), the lecture of which may give answers to questions about the methodology applied. But as I just see that her scholary interests are children and adolescents, which is limiting her statistical base to 10-15 year olds, I guess. Now think how many closeted homosexual teenagers fall out of her statistics then as "straight" without causing any head-aches to the researcher?
 
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Feral
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 01, 2007 - 11:55 PM



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vanrozenheim wrote:
Now think how many closeted homosexual teenagers fall out of her statistics then as "straight" without causing any head-aches to the researcher?


Ha ha -- ALL of them.

While I usually deride useless studies and their endless repetition in trivial permutations, this one I approve of -- provided it's data and conclusions are left in the proper sphere. I found this mention of the study from October of 2002 (quite nearly exactly 4 years before the results of this 'four-year' study were announced):

Quote:
7. INAUGURAL QUEER YOUTH STUDY: COMING OUT AS A TEEN
The California Endowment grant of $876,965 funds a three-year physical and mental health study of LGB (but not transgender) youth who come out to family members during adolescence. The initial phases of the study will focus on white and Latino youths. Caitlin Ryan, director of policy studies at the San Francisco State University (SFSU) Institute on Sexuality, Inequality and Health, and Rafael Diaz, a professor of human sexuality studies and ethnic studies at SFSU (who were awarded the grant), are focusing on five primary areas: mental health, substance abuse, sexual health, HIV risk and access to mental and physical care. One of the results of the study will be the creation of resources & guidelines for health-care providers to use in caring for queer youth. What is also unique about the study is that instead of only studying problems and risk – substance abuse, suicide risk, physical violence – faced by queer youth as most previous studies have done, the research focuses on their resilience and strength. Among the many reasons such a study is important is that teens are coming out at an earlier age, which means they are doing so when they are still very dependent on their family for food, shelter and support. The average age of awareness of same-sex attraction is 10 years old, noted Ryan. The California Endowment was created in 1996 to increase access to affordable health care for underserved communities in California. "The important result will be guidelines for delivering quality, culturally competent care to these vulnerable and underserved youth within the all-important context of their families," said Barbara Webster, program officer at the California Endowment.


Many teens DO come out at much earlier ages than they used to. This study though is of gay teenagers who have come out, not of gay people or even gay teenagers. It says nothing whatsoever about the gay teenagers who do not come out. The data from the study (and I agree that there should be MORE studies in this subject area) does not describe gay youth today, it describes precocious gay youth today. There are, of course, always precocious individuals, and their needs are important.

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 07, 2007 - 03:16 AM



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HAAA!!!

Judge orders florida school district to allow gay club

Quote:
(Okeechobee, Florida) A Federal judge has ruled the Okeechobee County school board cannot prevent students from organizing a Gay-Straight Alliance on campus.

U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union that barring the GSA violated the Equal Access Act.

It also is the first ruling in Florida to find that GSAs are not by definition "sex-based" clubs, something that the school board had claimed. 

Moore rejected rejected the school1s argument that the club would violate what the board said was a state abstinence-only education policy.

Moore issued a temporary injunction allowing the club to meet while the ACLU and the Board continue their legal battle.

In a 12 page ruling the judge said that the litigants showed they would likely succeed in their lawsuit against the school district.

"This decision sends a clear message to other schools that they face a similar fate in federal court if they choose to discriminate by deliberately misrepresenting GSAs as something they1re not," said lead attorney Rob Rosenwald, Director of the ACLU of Florida1s LGBT Advocacy Project.

"Violence and harassment against gay students is a rampant problem in Florida."

[...]

"This is great news," said Gonzalez, when she learned of the ruling.

"Even though I am graduating this year, I now know that by standing up to intolerance today, future students at OHS will benefit from a more open environment and not have to endure the same treatment from our school in the future."

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Feral
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 07, 2007 - 04:56 AM



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Double HAAA! and an "I told you so" Smile

Quote:
"This decision sends a clear message to other schools that they face a similar fate in federal court if they choose to discriminate by deliberately misrepresenting GSAs as something they're not," said lead attorney Rob Rosenwald


Alas, I am afraid it does no such thing. A very hefty damage award (if one is even forthcoming) might send such a message. School boards can be astonishingly dense... so dense that it is a wonderment they're permitted to oversee the education of anyone.

Barring GSAs violates the Equal Access Act. There are ways around the Equal Access Act, but the cost is quite high, and doing so actually will damage the little urchins' chances of getting into any but the most pathetic of universities.

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Feral
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 07, 2007 - 07:19 PM



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The ACLU of Florida has the pdf of the Judge's preliminary injunction ruling up here, should anyone care to read the entire thing.

The case is Gay-Straight Alliance of Okeechobee high School et al v. Okeechobee School Board.

It's hardly over just yet... this is just a preliminary injunction. Mind you, if the school board has any wit at all they will settle promptly and end the matter.

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 08, 2007 - 02:03 PM



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I imagine Yasmin in Florida, or Justin in Richmond Ontario could relate to this:

Quote:
On a dismal, rainy afternoon, over tea and Pepsi and a plate of fries at the Bob Evans restaurant in Cannonsburg, Kentucky, Bill Scaggs, a retired government and public-relations executive of ARMCO Steel, told me why he thinks that homosexuality is the greatest threat to America. "AIDS kills," was his circa 1984 answer, "and the most common way to pass that on of course is from homosexual contact." His voice cracking with indignation, Scaggs added that he refuses to use the word gay. "It's homosexual, or worse," he says. "Gay is in our Kentucky song! They took it away and trampled on it. We want it back."

Scaggs is a board member of Defenders Voice, a local organization formed two years ago by a group of ministers and their followers who fought the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Boyd County High School, just up the road from where we sat. Located on a stretch of state highway dotted with churches, dollar stores, payday lenders, and a drive-through cigarette store, the high school had become a place where anti-gay harassment had become an everyday occurrence.

Most of the time, student organizers of the Boyd County GSA said, the basis for the harassment was religious. One of the organizers, Libby Fugett, said that "most of the people at school, even the younger people, who would call us names at school, they would cuss at us; they would say, You f'ing fag, you're going to hell. . . . They just think it's excusable because their religion backs it up. And that was a really big part of it. It's okay for them to sin against us because we're sinners."

Leading the charge against the GSA were ministers, led by the Rev. Tim York, who said they "believe the Bible to be the word of God; we believe that homosexuality is a sin." (In 2004, York, who is now the pastor of a church in Nashville, ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Kentucky Senate on an anti-gay-marriage platform, with backing from the state and national Republican parties.) York and his followers exerted such intense pressure on school officials that it influenced their decision on the GSA, ultimately forcing the students to sue the school system in order have the GSA recognized.


Well, I don't for a second believe that it took much arm-twisting or effort to "influence" school board officials -- they seemed quite eager (and persistant) in their bigotry, to the point of costing the Boyd County High School board multi-thousands of dollars in settlements and legal fees.

But these anti-GSA bigots are tied in with a lot more than just persecuting innocent high school students; there's literally billions of dollars involved, and the goal is no less than the overthrow of one of the most basic principles of the US constitution. More from Sarah Posner, of the Washington Spectator, in which she explains how organic food giant Bolthouse Farms, Amway Corp., Focus on the Family, Blackwater mercenaries, Reagan-era appointees, Bill O'Reilly (and more) all tie together to fight GSAs, the ACLU, birth control, evolution and the United States Constitution... It's a lengthy article, but well worth reading. Here's some excerpts:

Quote:
... If Bill O'Reilly had a hero other than himself, it would be ADF and its courtroom crusaders lined up to fight the ACLU, Nickelodeon's homosexual agenda, and heathens who are hell-bent on censoring the words "Merry Christmas." ADF's president, Alan Sears, a former Reagan administration prosecutor who, according to the ADF's website, "God uniquely prepared" for his lead role in the organization, admits to being inspired by the right-wing commentator O'Reilly--hardly known for his jurisprudential acuity--to write portions of his book, The ACLU vs. America.

In the first chapter, Sears maintains that "from the very start, the ACLU wanted to destroy from within the America our founders intended." As proof of the ACLU's supposed anti-American, anti-Christian agenda, Sears fingers ACLU founder Roger Baldwin as an "agnostic and socialist who demonstrated Communist leanings"; Baldwin was moreover a friend of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, whom Sears calls a "eugenicist who . . . establish[ed] the early link between the ACLU and abortionists." Before the reader has turned even ten pages, Sears has established that only ADF's godly legal services can save the country from the havoc the ACLU has wreaked on its justice system and culture.

While the ACLU gained its reputation by winning cases, ADF's reputation--and fund-raising spigot--preceded its first court case. Created just 13 years ago with the support of such Christian Right powerhouses as James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, it is today the nation's leading Christian Right legal organization. Through its National Litigation Academy, ADF has trained more than 900 lawyers, who commit themselves to performing 450 hours of pro bono legal work "on behalf of the body of Christ." It doles out millions of dollars a year to other Christian Right organizations--many of which are already well endowed--to cover attorneys' fees and costs.

Its three principal goals are protecting the "sanctity of human life" (through litigating cases relating to abortion and end-of-life issues); promoting the "traditional family" (via cases concerning gay marriage and adoption); and ensuring the "religious freedom" of Christians (by portraying them as victims of discrimination on the part of those who seek to silence their ability to "speak the Truth" by preaching the Gospel). Using the propaganda machinery of conservative media outlets and churches, ADF has created a zeitgeist of Christian victimhood among people like Rev. York, who believes Christian students are the victims in Boyd County, and who has long admired ADF's "fight with the ACLU to protect Christian freedom and Christian liberty."

Last year, ADF received over $21 million in individual and foundation funding. Some of the major donors include the Covenant Foundation, financed by the "Granddaddy" of the Texas Christian Right, business mogul James Leininger; various members of the Amway-Prince Automotive empire, including the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, whose vice president, Erik Prince (Edgar and Elsa's son, and brother of Betsy DeVos, wife of the Amway magnate, right-wing financier, and unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard DeVos), founded the Blackwater USA military-security firm; and the Bolthouse Foundation, which is underwritten chiefly with profits from Bolthouse Farms, a family-run California company whose products are often seen at organic markets and Whole Foods.

[...]

In that first landmark case, Rosenberger vs. The Regents of the University of Virginia, ADF represented a student challenging the university's policy of not funding religious student groups through the same student activity fees that funded secular clubs. The Supreme Court deviated from its precedents and based its decision not on the Establishment Clause--which prohibits a state institution like the University of Virginia from endorsing or appearing to endorse a particular religion--but on ADF's theory of "viewpoint discrimination."

In other words, ADF convinced the Court that instead of determining whether the school's funding of religious clubs would be, or would appear to be, an endorsement of a particular religion, it should decide whether or not funding religious groups "discriminated" against them based on their religion. And discrimination is present, the Court reasoned, if the school funded secular clubs but not religious ones.

Rosenberger, then, not only began to bring down the Christian Right's dreaded "wall of separation" between government and religious activities, but elevated ADF's mythology of the victimized Christian to a legal precedent.

[...]

Over the past several years, ADF has seized on "viewpoint discrimination" to put the gay rights movement in its cross hairs. Gay rights, in ADF's view, cannot coexist with its version of Christianity. Anti-harassment codes at schools and universities, gay rights events, and other expressions of freedom or equal rights for LGBT people, necessarily silence Christians, who, ADF insists, are biblically compelled to condemn homosexuality. The "homosexual agenda," then, is ipso facto anti-Christian. Alan Sears, ADF's president, told the Family Research Council's Values Voters Summit last fall that "the homosexual agenda and religious freedom are on a collision course." He scoffed at what he called "propaganda about so-called oppression" of gays, countering that the "homosexual agenda" not only seeks to silence religious speech but it "probably includes the abolition of marriage."

[...]

Back in Boyd County, Kentucky, ADF lost its attempt to exempt its clients from the mandatory training, and is now appealing. Kevin Theriot, ADF's senior legal counsel, says the training video--which he hasn't seen--is trying "change the belief systems of religious students." In fact, the video, which is publicly available, acknowledges that "your religious beliefs are sacred and we're not trying to influence those," and "you have the right to express your beliefs" that "homosexuality is wrong" without harassing another student.

Despite ADF's ongoing litigation, the percentage of students viewing the video has steadily increased since 2004, when barely half the students watched it, to over 87 percent. But there is no longer a GSA at Boyd County High School, which to Bill Scaggs proves that it was just a "flash in the pan," failing to see that his organization intimidated the club out of existence. As William Carter, a Boyd County High School graduate whose efforts to start the GSA resulted in years of personal upheaval and entanglement in lawsuits, said, "Who wants to join a club where you would have to explain to your parents, you know, I'm going to be involved in a federal lawsuit because I'm going to be in a club or someone hit me in the head with a can of pop, or someone's going to kill me? No one's going to do that. It's high school."


(I was initially alerted to this Posner article by a Mother Jones blog post -- or as I call it, the straights waking up to the fact that it's not just the fags that they're after.)

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berto
Post subject:   PostPosted: Apr 27, 2007 - 11:41 PM



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Lawyers barred from questioning students about their sexuality

Quote:
(Okeechobee, Florida) A federal judge Thursday issued an order to lawyers battling to prevent a Gay-Straight Organization from forming at an Okeechobee from questioning student witnesses about their sexuality.

[...]

Thursday judge Frank J. Lynch, who will hear the civil rights suit, agreed to an ACLU motion which argued that defense attorneys' questions about students' sexual orientation would lead to "annoyance, embarrassment or oppression."

Some students expected to testify in the case had expressed concerns they would be grilled by lawyers for the school district about their sexuality.

In his written ruling Lynch wrote that he did "not see why this sensitive information is necessary or even relevant to deciding the plaintiff's rights under the Equal Access Act in light of alternative sources of information regarding the club."

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Post subject:   PostPosted: Aug 01, 2007 - 06:39 AM



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Hononegah panel: No Gay Straight Alliance

Quote:
ROCKTON — The Hononegah School Board’s co-curricular committee decided Monday night not to support the formation of a Gay Straight Alliance Club at the high school. It plans to recommend to the full School Board that it vote against the proposal when it meets in August.
...
The committee later revealed that it received a letter before the meeting from the ACLU. While it did not contain threats of legal action, Superintendent Randy Gross said, it did recommend for legal reasons that the board support formation of the GSA.

“I am sure they hate dealing with this subject with the sword of the ACLU dangling over its head,” Llewellyn said.


Oh, I suppose they must hate it. Of course the ACLU recommended "for legal reasons" that the board support the formation of the GSA. It's good advice. Of course, this was just the co-curricular committee, and they've done nothing actionable -- just silly. The "Promoting Awareness Creates Tolerance" is irrelevant to the students right to form a non-curricular GSA. Should the full board in fact vote against the proposal in August, I suspect they will find the ACLU is no longer in the advice-giving mood. The school board has but two legitimate options -- ban all non-curricular clubs, or allow the GSA. The course the co-curricular committee suggests is expensive and futile.

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Post subject: Okeechobee School Board closer to banning 'sex-based' clubs  PostPosted: Aug 16, 2007 - 07:35 AM



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Okeechobee County School Board moves closer to banning 'sex-based' clubs

Quote:
OKEECHOBEE — The Okeechobee County School Board on Tuesday moved closer to banning what it calls "sex-based clubs," student groups that challenge the district's abstinence-only sex education, according to district officials.

However, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said the board's intent is to attack students who have formed a club to promote tolerance of gay men and lesbians, and who have sued the district for keeping the club off school grounds much of last school year.

Should the school board adopt the new rule in a final vote next month, "I will seek further judicial relief, including additional substantial attorneys' fees," ACLU attorney Robert Rosenwald wrote in a letter to an attorney for the school district.

...

The Gay-Straight Alliance's lawsuit against the school board continues to move through the court system, and there was talk recently of settling, Rosenwald said.

However the district's proposed new "Draconian policy" shows "they want to drag this out to the end," Rosenwald said.


I love the word 'substantial.' It may be at its very best in the phrase "substantial attorneys' fees."

I also love Florida. If it weren't for Florida, I might not have anything to talk about for just days and days on end.

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Post subject:   PostPosted: Sep 05, 2007 - 05:18 AM



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Rochelle overcomes hurdles

Quote:
At Rochelle, students complied with all the rules in requesting a student club. They wrote a mission statement, but their request stalled as more and more obstacles continued to be placed in their path, said Sarah Schriber, staff counsel at the ACLU of Illinois. That is when the ACLU became involved, Schriber said.

For Schriber, forming a GSA at a school is no different from the formation of a key club, chess club, FFA or any other club.

"The Federal Equal Access Act of 1984 lays out very clearly what schools must do, not just for GSAs, but for all clubs," said Schriber. "Schools that receive federal assistance and schools that are by definition secondary schools, basically a high school, must follow the rules. If even one student wants to form a club like a GSA, it must permit the school to have a GSA."

The ACLU has reminded the Hononegah board by letter of its obligation to consider all clubs equally.

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Post subject:   PostPosted: Sep 26, 2007 - 07:28 PM



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Judge orders access to gay rights group at Maple Grove high

Quote:
The Osseo school district must give a student-run gay rights group at Maple Grove Senior High the same privileges it offers other extracurricular clubs, such as the use of school rooms for meetings, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

...

"The District's argument is circular - the District deems certain student groups curricular because it sanctions them, but the District decides which groups to sanction," the judge wrote in a footnote. "This type of decision making is exactly what the Equal Access Act is meant to prohibit."

The school district had classified SAGE as a noncurricular group. Such groups could put up posters only on a community bulletin board and outside their meeting places and were prohibited from using other forms of school communication, according to the 11-page ruling.


This time its in the suburbs northwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The law on this issue really is quite clear -- in district after district. You can read the ruling on this particular injunction here. (It's a PDF file.)

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