hunter of justice

Don we now our straight apparel...

It seems an elementary school teacher in Cherry Knoll, Michigan, told the children in her class to substitute "bright" for "gay" in the lyrics for "Deck the Halls," because the children giggled when they sang "gay." No worries - the school admonished the teacher, and everyone is now back on the same page, Christmas carol-wise.

Fa la la la la la...

Deja vu all over again: Conservatives seek signatures to repeal SB 48

California's FAIR Education Act (fair accurate inclusive respectful) will take effect in one month (on January 1), but its opponents will spend the rest of 2012 gunning for it, first seeking enough signatures to get two amendments eviscerating it onto the ballot and then trying to persuade voters to adopt them.

The letter from the Committee to Repeal SB48 to the Attorney General describes the amendment that would delete lgbt history from required coverage in public schools. A separate initiative from the Committee for Parental Rights for Education would allow parents to remove their children from lessons that conflict with their religious training and belief.

The groups failed in an earlier signature-gathering attempt that would have put repeal of SB 48 on the ballot in the state's primary election in June, and there were suspicions that conservative donors held back support because of a desire to delay the issue until the November 2012 election. Once the Attorney General certifies the questions, the anti-SB48 groups will have 150 days to gather approximately 505,000 signatures. (The number is derived from a formula geared to 5% of the number of votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election.) The best guess, given the expected review time in the AG's office, is that the deadline will be set in April of next year.

District Court considers injunction against Missouri school district's filtering software

U.S. District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey heard arguments yesterday on whether to grant an injunction against a Missouri school district's use of filtering software that screens out lgbt-positive sites.

From the Kansas City Star:

... Judge Laughrey made no immediate decision on whether to impose a preliminary injunction against the Camdenton School District at the request of attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union. She also was considering the school district's assertion that an unnamed student and several organizations that operate websites had no legal standing to bring the lawsuit because they had not suffered any harm from the district's policy.

The Camdenton school system is the first to be sued under a recent national campaign by the ACLU and Yale Law School intended to improve access at schools to websites related to gay and lesbian issues. Of more than 100 school districts contacted as part of the project, only the Camdenton, Mo., and Gwinnet County Public School District in Georgia have not yet responded by changing their Internet filtering software, said Joshua Block, an attorney for the ACLU's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project.

Although they have not changed website filtering services, Camdenton school officials testified that they have allowed access to four specific websites cited by the ACLU that had previously been blocked by filters. During Thursday's hearing, school officials repeatedly stressed that they have no intent to discriminate against websites with gay and lesbian content.

In 2010, Camdenton schools began using an Internet filtering service provide by URL.BlackList.com that the ACLU contends infringes on First Amendment rights by grouping some non-sexual websites related to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender issues into a blacklisted category of websites dealing with sexuality. The Camdenton School District allows students or employees who get blocked from a website to submit an anonymous request for access to the site. School officials then view the website and decide whether to override the filtering service and allow access to it.

Over the past few years, the district has received about 2,000 requests to unblock certain websites and has granted about 80 percent of those, testified Randal Cowen, the district's network administrator.

The school district's attorney, Thomas Mickes, argued that the student — listed only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit — had no legal standing to sue because she had not requested and been denied access to any website. He said the nonprofit organizations that operate websites similarly had no legal standing to sue, because there is no constitutional right for Internet publishers to have access to public school students.

Mickes argued that the school had not censored any websites based on their viewpoints. He said sites dealing with gay and lesbian issues that get blocked by the filtering software are treated the same in the review process as any other website that gets flagged by the filters.

Block, representing the ACLU, argued that the school system has engaged in censorship by continuing to use a filtering service that it now knows is overly broad in blocking access to some gay and lesbian websites. The ACLU said few other school districts use the same filtering service as Camdenton.

Before its current campaign, the ACLU in 2009 sued the Knoxville and Nashville school districts in Tennessee over access to websites with lesbian and gay information. Those districts then agreed to stop using filtering software that blocked those sites.

Two powerful new reports on lgbt families and youth

Two major reports came out today that have the potential to significantly influence policy debates in their respective, related areas.

A trio of organizations published All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families, which spells out in more than 100 pages (with more than 450 footnotes) the ways in which anti-gay policies impede three key needs of every child: stable, loving homes; economic security; and health and well-being. In each area, the report documents the problems, demonstrates the effects of discriminatory laws and policies, and provides recommendations. The Child Welfare League of America wrote the foreword and endorsed the report, which was co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project, Family Equality Council and the Center for American Progress. 

The second publication is from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:  Peer to Peer Violence and Bullying: Examining the Federal Response. As a threshold matter, its very issuance signals that the Commission is alive again, after having been starved and sidelined by years of Republican administrations. This  report, also lengthy and well-documented, includes specific findings and recommendations:

The Commission, by majority vote, concluded  that  bullying and harassment, including bullying and harassment based on sex, race, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or religion, are  harmful to American youth, and developed findings and recommendations to address the problem, including the following recommendations:

 The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice should track their complaints/inquiries regarding sexual harassment or gender-based harassment by creating a category that explicitly encompasses LGBT youth.

 The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice should track complaints that they receive regarding harassment based solely on sexual orientation that are closed for lack of jurisdiction.

 The U.S. Department of Education should track complaints that it receives regarding harassment based solely on religion that are closed for lack of jurisdiction.

 The U.S. Department of Education should consider issuing a new Dear Colleague Letter regarding the First Amendment implications of anti-bullying policies. The new Letter should provide concrete examples to clarify the guidance that the Department of Education previously provided [on] July 28, 2003.

Two really impressive contributions. 

The week ahead: October 24, 2011

Tuesday October 25 - "All Children Matter," an event at which LGBT, allied, and child welfare-focused organizations will release the first comprehensive report documenting the experiences of the 2 million children with LGBT parents and how they are hurt and could be helped by the legal system. Live webcast 10 am to 12 noon.

Thursday October 27 - The final set of briefs from the plaintiffs is due in Gill v. OPM, pending in the First Circuit. 

Also October 27 - Hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction in PFLAG v. Camdenton School District, in which the ACLU is challenging the use of filtering software that blocks all LGBT-support sites, pending before U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

Friday October 28 - Deadline for submissions to the LGBTQ Policy Journal of the Harvard Kennedy School.

Group seeking to repeal CA FAIR Education Act falls short of necessary signatures

The Stop SB48 group came up short yesterday in submittting enough signatures to move forward with a referendum to repeal the California FAIR Act. It appears from the following SF Chronicle article that support from their fellow conservatives was underwhelming. This means that the law will go into effect on January 1 as scheduled. However, it is still possible that the issue could go on the November 2012 ballot in a different form.

Backers of an effort to repeal a law that requires schools teach about the historical contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, and people with disabilities, failed to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The group, Stop SB48, which is named after the law, faced a Wednesday deadline to turn in just under 505,000 signatures. In an e-mail, the group said, "We thank all of you that worked so hard to provide the hundreds of thousands of signatures received. In the end, 90 days was too short a time to accomplish such a large task."

The nearly all-volunteer effort faced not only a short time frame, but a lack of significant contributions from national socially conservative organizations. The backers of the referendum noted that point in their e-mail.

"They said we did not have enough money, the commitment of enough groups, or enough days. Ultimately they were right. And in private perhaps they will ask if the effort they withheld would have made the critical difference," the e-mail stated.

Still the group vowed, "There will be a next battle." Gay rights organizations believe it is likely that efforts to fight the law will continue in the form of a ballot initiative for the November 2012 election that will attract big pocket donors.

The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, requires that public schools include the historical contributions of LGBT people and people with disabilities in social science instructions. Textbooks also will have to include that information.

The week ahead: October 10, 2011

Monday October 10 - Deadline for workshop proposals for the Creating Change Conference, to be held January 27-29, 2012 in Baltimore.

Tuesday, October 11 - Supreme Court may announce whether it will grant cert in Adar v. Smith, the gay adoption case in which Louisiana officials refused to recognize an out-of-state two-parent adoption. Adar was on the Court's conference calendar last Friday. If the Justices reached a decision during conference on whether to accept the case, the announcement is likely to be made on Tuesday. If there was no decision at conference, the case will be re-listed for a future conference.

Also October 11 - Briefs due in Ninth Circuit on whether videotapes of Prop 8 trial should remain under seal pending a decision on whether District Court Judge Ware's order releasing them to the public was correct.

Wednesday, October 12 - Today is the deadline for those seeking to repeal the California FAIR Education Act by voter referendum to turn in the signatures they have gathered. If they meet the requirement of just under 505,000 valid signatures, the question will go on the 2012 ballot.

Friday and Saturday, October 14 and 15 - UCLA Queer Studies Conference "will explore and exploit issues of fashion, queerly construed." Sounds like fun. More information here.

Support for pro-gay speech and gay teachers rises dramatically

According to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, public support for allowing an "admitted homosexual" to speak or to teach has risen farther and faster than support for any other of the unpopular speech categories that NORC has studied. Allowing an openly gay person to speak has shot up from 62% in 1973 to 86% in 2010; the level of support for allowing an openly gay person to be a teacher was 48% in 1973 and 84% in 2010.

By comparison, the support levels for "someone who is against all churches and religion" moved in the same time period from 66% to 72% for speaking and from 41% to 60% for teaching.

The full report contains results for other unpopular speakers as well, none of which registered the same jump in public support as the "admitted homosexuals." The underlying data come from the GSS (General Social Survey), probably the most respected source of data on social trends in the U.S.

NYC teacher taken out of classroom for online defense of sex work

According to the NY Times, a public school teacher in New York City is being treated the way gay teachers were treated 30 years ago. Her crime is not sexual orientation. but her acknowledgment that she previously worked as a prostitute. 

You know, there was a famous referendum, a famous Supreme Court case and, two years ago, a famous movie about the effort to purge schools of gay teachers and anyone who advocated homosexuality. This situation is really no different.  

Where's the new Harvey Milk?

A teacher at a Bronx elementary school has been reassigned after writing on a Web site about her past as a sex worker. In a short online article in The Huffington Post on Sept. 7, the teacher, Melissa Petro, criticized Craigslist for shutting down its “adult services” section, which carried sex-related advertising.

Ms. Petro wrote that from October 2006 to January 2007, she “accepted money in exchange for sexual services I provided to men I met online.” She said that she used Craigslist to meet men and it provided “a simple, familiar forum through which I could do my business with complete anonymity, from the safety and convenience of my own home.” She also wrote that she found “the lifestyle physically demanding, emotionally taxing and spiritually bankrupting,” and gave it up after a few months.

Ms. Petro was hired as a teacher in August 2007, a spokeswoman for the city Education Department, Natalie Ravitz, wrote in an e-mail on Sunday. She said that Ms. Petro worked at Public School 70 in the Bronx and had tenure. Ms. Ravitz said that Ms. Petro had been reassigned pending an inquiry by Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the city schools. She declined further comment. 

Minow: Expect issue of sex segregated schools to reach Supreme Court

Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow has just published In Brown's Wake, a book that analyzes the multiple legacies of Brown v. Board of Education - including in litigation over non-race issues, social science and beyond the U.S.

From an interview of her at SCOTUSblog:

Which big issues concerning school integration – racial or otherwise – do you think are likely to come before the Court next?

Minow: I think that the treatment of gender separation in schools is on its way to the [Supreme] Court.  There are an escalating number of single-sex classrooms and single-sex schools operated by public school systems or with public dollars.  And there’s confusion, even among advocates, about what is the best interpretation of statutory as well as constitutional law with regard to those programs, including whether there must be a comparable alternative offered to people of the other sex.  That was a question that was left open in the Virginia Military Institute case [United States v. Virginia (1996)], and I think that there will be further litigation on that question in the federal courts.  It may well make its way up to the Supreme Court.

Wisconsin DA threatens to arrest teachers for following sex ed law

A local district attorney in Wisconsin - the same person who tried unsuccessfully to prevent the University of Wisconsin from using student fees to support student organizations he disagreed with [in Bd of Regents, Univ. of Wisconsin v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000)] - has sent a letter to teachers in his county stating that they can be prosecuted for child sexual abuse if they demonstrate contraceptive methods to minors. Yes, he's an idiot and yes it's a ridiculous argument. But imagine that you are a high school teacher and you got this letter from your local prosecutor:

Juneau County DA Scott Harold Southworth closed his letter by imploring school officials not to comply with the sex ed law "because it risks the safety of our children." Who's perverted in this story?

HT - Barbara Kerr

Safer schools in North Carolina

Since one of the first posts on this blog, a little more than a year ago, was about the failure of the North Carolina legislature to pass an anti-bullying bill because it would protect gay and transgender kids, I thought it only fair to note that this year, the legislature got the job done. 

The NC School Violence Prevention Act was signed into law by the Governor on June 30. It requires each local school district to adopt, publicize and enforce explicit anti-bullying policies. The new law squeaked by in both houses of the state legislature: by votes of 26 to 22 in the state senate and 63 to 51 in the house.

The act is the first state-wide law in NC to protect against any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and the first state-wide law in any southern state to protect against gender identity discrimination. Congrats to Equality NC!

Project on Harvey Milk inappropriate for California sixth graders

UPDATE: The ACLU has announced that the school has apologized, allowed the presentation to be made to the class, and agreed to rectify its misinterpretation of California's policy on family life/sex education.

On the eve of the California Supreme Court's decision on the challenge to Prop 8, another example has emerged of the ease with which any gay-positive speech can become tainted as sexually inappropriate. In Ramona, CA, a school principal refused to allow a sixth grader to do the in-class presentation portion of a research project because her topic was the life of Harvey Milk.

According to the ACLU, which is representing the girl and her mother:

The assignment, part of an independent research project class, was originally to prepare a written report on any topic.  Natalie Jones, who was inspired to write about Harvey Milk after watching Sean Penn win an Academy Award for portraying him, got a score of 49 out of a possible 50 points on the written report.  Students were then told to make PowerPoint presentations about their reports, which they would show to other students in the class.  The day before Natalie was to give her 12-page presentation she was called into the principal’s office and told she couldn’t do so. 
 
When Bonnie Jones spoke with the superintendent about the presentation, he said Natalie couldn’t give her presentation because of a district board policy on “Family Life/Sex Education.”  A few days later, the school sent letters to parents of students in the class, explaining that her presentation would be held during a lunch recess on May 8, and that students could only attend if they had parental permission.

The principal's decision was based on the school district's policy on "family life/sex education," which provides:

“(P)arents/guardians shall be notified in writing about any instruction in which human reproductive organs and their functions, processes, or sexually transmitted diseases are described, illustrated, or discussed.  In addition, before any instruction on family life, human sexuality, AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases is given, the parent/guardian shall be provided with written notice explaining that the instruction will be given…”

So I guess the story of the early stages of a civil rights movement, as recounted by a 12-year-old girl, falls into the category of "human sexuality" if the movement in question is for lgbt rights. The principal's panicky reaction, absurd as it is, illustrates the fear that children will be "taught" homosexuality, a fear that drove the most effective Yes on 8 ads in last fall's campaign.

And the irony, of course, is that this school project had nothing to do with marriage, and the outcome of the Prop 8 decision tomorrow will have no bearing, either way, on the ACLU's challenge to it.