Local School Board Caves In to Homophobes

Last night, the Rowan-Salisbury school board decided unanimously to kick the Gay-Straight Alliance out of South Rowan High School. This is just stupid.

The effort to ban the GSA was organized by "Operation Save America", a group of witless homophobes affiliated with the noxious anti-choice group "Operation Rescue". In their view:

Here is the problem. Homosexuality is not only out of the closet and parading its sin publicly in the hallways of South Rowan, it demands all bow down and be subject to it, or be sued. Friends, if we do not fight this battle now when we have a good chance of winning in Jesus' name, we may find ourselves having to fight when there is little or no hope of victory, realizing that it is better to die free than live under the bondage of homosexual slavery.

Some of the folks who came out to the board meeting to support the ban expressed similarly hateful sentiments:

Carl Ford, who has been an active supporter of the high school, said sodomy was illegal in North Carolina, so a Gay/Straight Alliance shouldn't exist.

He also wondered why South was forced to drop its old mascot, the Rebels, when this club — which offends more community members — was being allowed to meet.

But as asinine as Operation Save America and its supporters are, the school board here deserves the lion's share of the moral blame, if only because they are supposed to be the adults in the room. But not so much. Here's how it went down:

The law says that if any non-curricular club is allowed to meet, all must be, as long as they meet voluntarily, are student-initiated, not school-sponsored, and are not materially or substantially disruptive of school activities.

When board members asked South's principal, Dr. Ron Turbyfill, whether the club was disruptive, he said he did not consider it to be.

"If your measure of disruptiveness is whether or not we are able to conduct classes, it is not," he said, adding that classes have gone on every day as usual.

Kay Wright Norman said the board should define "disruptive" before adding the clause about it to their ban, but Shuping said it was up to the board to interpret that.

Other board members looked for ways around the issue that would not require them to ban all student clubs.

Dr. Jim Emerson asked Sayers if schools could have service clubs, like the Civitans, and academic clubs without allowing other non-curricular clubs, but Sayers said that would be against the law.

Kyle Huffman warned board and audience members that banning the Gay/Straight Alliance might force the board to ban other clubs.

"We will have other ramifications," he said. "We may lose some very good organizations because of this equal access law."

No matter that school principle said the club isn't disruptive (and indeed, how could it be?), the board decided that disruption was in the eye of the intolerant and that by saying it was so, made it so. Positively inspired bamboozling.

But worst of all is Board Chairman Bryce Beard, who seemed to want to do the right thing, but just couldn't summon up the guts to actually do it.

Board Chairman Bryce Beard said the board had a difficult decision: While it hoped to reflect the community's wishes, it also had to promote students' rights.

"We have to be for the children, and that's whoever we have that shows up at our door to receive an education," he said.

Allowing the Gay/Straight Alliance wouldn't be popular, but "at the same time, we don't want to stigmatize children," he said. "…In reality in our community, (homosexuals) are pretty good citizens."

Nice words, comparatively speaking, and yet the vote to ban the GSA was unanimous. Thanks for the profile in courage, Bryce.

Oh, and the fact that the school board chose to ban all "sexually-oriented clubs" as their way of killing the Gay-Straight Alliance just goes to show the board members didn't even bother to find out exactly what the GSA actually is, or just didn't care.

The courts will overturn this blatantly illegal decision when the school district is inevitably sued, and the school board undoubtedly knows this. But as this case winds its way through the judicial system, time, money, and credibility will all be wasted, and in the end the district will face the choice of either allowing the GSA back on campus, or eliminating all other student groups. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

And all this because a few kids decided to form a club dedicated to friendship and tolerance. It wouldn't be crazy to think that they won't make that mistake again, but I hope they do. And I hope that a lot of other students in schools everywhere do too.