Advocate.com reports that a student in Louisiana got sent home yesterday, 23 March, because she was wearing a T-shirt that said "Some kids r gay. That's ok."
The school claimed that "the T-shirt was disruptive."
When will school officials realise that they cannot conjure up lame excuses to abridge the freedom of speech of their students? When will schools learn that they cannot hide their homophobic responses behind claims of "impropriety" and "disruption"?
Now, even if we give the middle school in this case the benefit of the doubt, and accept that they sent the girl home because of the "disruption" her T-shirt caused, the school is still wrong, terribly wrong.
The point of schooling, of education, is for students to exchange ideas, to challenge the opinions of others and to have their own opinions be challenged. One of a school's prime responsibility is to create an environment where its students can conduct this intellectual exchange.
By sending Dawn Henderson home, the Desoto Parish Middle School failed at its job. It should have used the occasion to promote discussion on the topic of LGBT rights, on the topic of gender identity, on the topic of bullying. Instead, it punished Henderson. Instead, it sent a message to its students, and the community at large, that advocating for the LGBT community was "disruptive" and unwelcomed.
From cases where schools refused to allow students to take friends of the same sex to prom, to cases like this, schools administrations across the United States have demonstrated an astonishing lack of educational aptitude, of professionalism.
Yes, these incidents are few. However, ideally there should be none.
School administrators, and politicians, should realise that, in the end, like George Wallace once had to, they will have to give up their stand in the schoolhouse door, and allow equality, diversity, and tolerance to move through.
On a brighter note, CNN reports that the Colorado Senate has passed a bill allowing civil unions in the state. Let's hope Colorado will not f*** up like Maryland.
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