Gay Teens Are Using the System
Gay high school students across California are increasingly using the courts and political activism to fight individual cases of discrimination and to promote tolerance.
The moves, educators and legal observers say, come at a time of exponential growth in the number of gay student clubs and an acceptance of homosexuality on high school campuses that would have been unheard of a decade ago.
"It's a reflection of the students' desire to not just not be beat up, but to actually have full equality," said Carolyn Laub, executive director of the Gay Straight Alliance Network in San Francisco. "They want to be treated just the same" as their straight classmates.
Recent examples abound: A lesbian teen sued Garden Grove educators to defend her right to kiss her girlfriend on campus. Bakersfield students sued their district after a principal barred the school newspaper from printing articles about homosexuality that identified gay students by name -- even with their parents' permission. Los Angeles Unified settled a harassment suit brought by students by pledging to provide antibias training to students and staff at Washington Prep High School.
For the last two years, gay students in Los Altos in the Silicon Valley have sparked an off-campus controversy by urging city leaders to create a Gay Pride Day. And hundreds of gay, lesbian and transgender youths converged Monday on Sacramento to champion proposed legislation that would allow the state to withhold funds from districts that fail to abide by a California law that protects gay students from discrimination.
Some contend the students are being used as pawns by adult gay activists and argue that school is no place for such volatile issues.
"They are being manipulated by the adults to push the gay agenda," said Richard Ackerman, president of the Pro-Family Law Center in Temecula. "My kids should be going [to school] to learn math, reading, writing. It shouldn't be an opportunity for someone else to
But while the American Civil Liberties Union, the Gay Straight Alliance Network and other organizations are involved in lawsuits and political activism, officials with these groups say they are providing legal and organizational help to students who are picking their own battles.
"More and more students are realizing, 'Wow, when the principal censors my speech just because it has something to do with sex orientation, that's something that violates the law,' " said Christine Sun, an ACLU attorney representing students in the Garden Grove and Bakersfield cases.
