A federal judge has ruled that a Florida school district must permit a gay-straight allliance club to meet on a high school campus, rejecting the district鈥檚 arguments that allowing such a club would be contrary to its abstinence-only sex education program.
The by U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore of Miami is the latest in a line of decisions in the federal courts that have generally required schools to treat GSAs on equal terms with other non-curricular student clubs. The judge said the case involving a proposed GSA at Okeechobee High School in 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鈥� speech.
The Okeechobee district argued that recognizing a gay-straight alliance would compromise its abstinence-only program, which is promoted both by the federal government and the state of Florida to teach that abstinence from sex promotes monogamous relationships in the context of marriage.
Judge Moore said the district 鈥渉as not clarified how dialogue promoting tolerance towards non-homosexual individuals is antithetical to principles of abstinence.鈥�
The judge indicated that the school district鈥檚 concern about the 鈥減remature sexualization鈥� 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 鈥渞eserved for instruction by qualified teachers in a classroom environment.鈥�
Judge Moore cited three other federal district court rulings under the Equal Access Act that have upheld the right of students to form gay-straight alliances. But he noted one contrary ruling in which a federal court in Texas denied recognition of a gay student group because Texas law criminally penalized homosexual acts between minors and the group鈥檚 Web site had links to lewd and obscene content. The judge in that 2004 Texas case, , cited language in the Equal Access Act that allows school officials to 鈥減rotect the well-being of students.鈥�
The American Civil Liberties Union, which backed the lawsuit by students seeking to form the gay-straight alliance, issued on the decision.
The Associated Press reports here.