Gay student wears a shirt featuring a rainbow-colored Jesus fish with the logo ‘Jesus was not a homophobe.’ on LGBT Day of Silence April 2011. Is told to turn the shirt inside out. Complies. Wears the shirt again. Mom is called and student is told to remove the shirt or face suspension. Complies. In the fall, asks if he can wear the shirt and is told no.
Lambda Legal steps in and sends a letter to the school district.
Emphasis added.
Lambda sues and (surprise) wins. School district’s insurer is out $20K (plus I’m sure the District had their own legal costs) resulting, I’m sure, in higher insurance fees. Superintendent Dubbs (COWARD) doesn’t return AP calls, but had earlier told the Student Press Law Center that the lawsuit was a surprise:
Again, emphasis added.
Translation: “We just thought this was one little poor faggot and that we could scare him straight (or at least into the closet). We had no idea that the perverts were organized! Now we’ve got this bill to pay. Plus, do you realize how much harder this is going to make things for us and all the other Cowardly and Bullying Superintendents/Principals around the country?”
Superintendent Dubbs and the Principal involved should never again be involved in the education of children.
I agree with this Pitting. “Once we became aware of Lambda Legal, we wanted to avoid court.”
It is hard to read that any other way than: when we just thought we were facing a kid and his mom, we were willing to push them around, but the moment they brought in some actual authority who knew the law, we wanted nothing to do with that!
Nothing to say but ‘great OP’ - beautiful combination of legitimate outrage, quality research, with some clever (ironic) name calling thrown in for a bonus. Nice job!
Bricker, any chance you could find a copy of the actual filings and opinion in the case? Not having West Law, my google-fu is weak and coming up dry.
Chefguy, actually I never called either Superintendent Dubbs or the Principal homophobes. I said they were bullies (and cowards) and I stand by that assessment.
There are other documents are available through PACER, but that’s a fee service. Luckily, they are also available on the Lambda Legal site (PDF documents):
Are you supporting that there’s something in errantly wrong about malapropisms ? That they refry poorly upon one’s perspired intelligence ? That a bannister should watch his language with more circumambulation ?
Well it is! I mean, after all, Dubbs and Gebhardt had already offered to let the poor little misguided soul wear his devil shirt one day a year! (LGBT Silence Day).
Most interesting to me in the documents Bricker posted was the assertion that Gebhardt (the Principal) originally nixed the shirt as a SOCAS issue based on its religious message! Wayne Local must have quickly realized what a loser that was going to be and switched to the sexual thing later. Wonder if they’ve ever had or allowed to be promoted one of those “virginity pledge” events.
Now, see, talking about virginity means the opposite of talking about sex! Talking about not being a homophobe means you’re talking about sex, because that’s all that gays are about. Understand now?
I think I sprained my brain, making those mental leaps… ouch.
That a public school superintendent could be a bully and a coward is shocking! The next thing you’ll tell me is that students are bullies and cowards too!
I’ve never seen it in 7 years of reviewing legal communications. It doesn’t make sense in this context, anyway. The point of a footnote is to avoid having parenthetical citations take over a page, but when explaining a rule, the reader’s eye has to jump up and down repeatedly in order to determine which case each segment stems from.