Schools Generally Required to Allow GSA

A federal judge ruled that Okeechobee High School in Florida had to allow the establishment of a Gay-Straight Alliance Club because the Okeechobee County school district was governed by the federal Equal Access Act.

"That law bars federally funded secondary schools from denying equal access to student non-curricular clubs on the basis of religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the club members' speech."

This decision seems like the natural result of social progress. We live in a diverse country whose government and public institutions don't discriminate on the basis of differences that people have a legitimate and inalienable right to hold. To do otherwise would inevitably lead to the promotion of some values, viewpoints, subjective beliefs over others. This is also the basis of oppression at the hands of those temporally in powerful. That's why we have the first amendment in the first place, to ensure that people can live, think, and act in way that they choose for themselves.

What I find interesting about this case is the rational behind denying these students from founding a Gay-Straight Alliance. The school district argued that allowing a GSA to form would be, "contrary to its abstinence-only education program." Here's where the school district started to fuck up. They claimed that allowing a  GSA would under their attempt to "promote monogamous relationships in the context of marriage." It's not every day that conservatives do such a great job making themselves sound retarded that no additional work is required of me.  

Basically, the District refused to allow the GSA's establishment on the grounds that it would promote homosexuality, which in turn would promote homosexual behavior, which would then in turn promote homosexual sex. I must say, these are some impressive logic jumps for people who thought that abstinence-only eduction was a good idea in the first place. I would hope at this point people would be less likely to rely on that backwards type of thinking, but at least the judge, whose authority makes all the difference, had more sense than that.

Judge Moore said the district "has not clarified how dialogue promoting tolerance towards non-homosexual individuals is antithetical to principles of abstinence." He didn't go too far though. "The judge indicated that the school district's concern about the "premature sexualization" of adolescents was legitimate, but he doubted that the GSA was intended to promote that. The district could take steps to ensure that the club avoided sex education topics "reserved for instruction by qualified teachers in a classroom environment."

What is with all this "premature sexualization" stuff? On the one hand, it could be just another piece of conservative rhetoric designed as a powerful and legitimate sounding way of defending subjective, ideology-inspired beliefs, like homophobia. But look closely at this phrase. "Sexualization?" Teaching straight people that gay people exist is presupposed to "sexualize" them somehow? I guess that's true, insofar as this is an issue of sexual orientation. But at its most basic, this term is a coded way of communicating disgust for homosexuality and is part of an attempted pushback against the gradual (and inevitable) purging of these outdated modes of tought from mainstream society. And what is the first part of this phrase intended to convey? That to the creation of a Gay-Straight Alliance would be introducing the majority of high school these students to the idea of homosexuality? Something tells me that these students are more familiar with the idea that not everyone is attracted to the same sex than these administrators are aware. Granted we went against reason and our better judgement and assumed, as these educators do, that their students didn't know what homosexuality was, when would be the appropriate time to make them aware of this?

Quotes from here.