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Politics

Lawsuit challenges attitudes on gays

The ACLU supports a push for a school gay-straight club.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 2, 2007

OKEECHOBEE - The message to gays in this rural cattle town is spoken politely, sometimes with a drawl, sometimes quoting the Bible, but the meaning is anything but a hospitable Southern welcome.

High school senior Yasmin Gonzalez has been hearing it a lot - from kids hanging out bus windows shouting, "Are you the one that's gay?" to the teacher who said homosexuals should die.

Gonzalez, 17, has become something of a target since November, when the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit on her behalf against Okeechobee High School's principal and the School Board for refusing to let her establish a Gay-Straight Alliance, an afterschool club that promotes tolerance.

"There's so much discrimination here," she said.

She is suing under the 1984 federal Equal Access Act. It says if a public school allows any extracurricular activities to meet on campus, it must allow all groups to do the same.

Similar challenges have been mounted by groups in Utah, Georgia and North Carolina.

But public sentiment runs against Gonzalez in Okeechobee, a town of about 5,500 residents and 60 churches.

"I don't think it's right. If they're going to let that in school, it's showing it's okay. In the Bible, it says it's an abomination. (A Gay-Straight Alliance) is not a message you want to give your kids," said resident Dave Mangold, 31.

Because the school won't recognize Gonzalez's club, she holds meetings at an athletic complex nearby. The club claims about 50 members, but only Gonzalez and Jessica Donaldson, who is straight, were there on a recent Wednesday. Gonzalez said most supporters are afraid to talk to the media or banned by parents who fear for their community standing.

When Gonzalez tried to register her club, she said, administrators first told her that the school didn't allow any (despite listing more than a dozen on its Web site). Later, she was told that there were too many clubs and, finally, that the school had an abstinence-only policy.

Despite numerous telephone calls, superintendent Patricia Cooper declined to comment. The school's attorney, Barbara Weller, did not return several telephone calls.

Cooper, who attends a Baptist church, did grant an interview to the Florida Baptist Witness.

"My position was then and remains that we are an abstinence-only district, that our clubs are primarily dealing with curriculum or curriculum-related clubs and organizations, and we would decline the request," Cooper told the paper.

The school filed a motion in December to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the club is not protected under the federal act.

But lawyer Ron Rosenwald, who has been handling the lawsuit for the ACLU, said, "The message that Okeechobee County is sending is that antigay harassment and discrimination is an acceptable policy there and that their gay and lesbian students are second-class citizens."

[Last modified January 2, 2007, 05:34:34]