California School Bans Sixth I Presentation on Harvey Milk
California School Bans Sixth
Grader’s Presentation on Harvey MilkFaces Possible
ACLU Lawsuit For Violation Of State Education Code
RAMONA, CA – Wrongly citing a school policy on sex education, a
California
school illegally censored a sixth grader’s classroom presentation about Harvey
Milk earlier this month. According
to a demand letter sent by the American Civil Liberties Union to the
Ramona Unified School
District today, the school violated Natalie Jones’s
free speech rights when it refused to allow her to give the presentation in
class. Instead, the school
improperly required classmates to get parental permission to see the
presentation during a lunch recess.
“This whole thing is unbelievable –
first my daughter got called into the principal’s office as if she were in some
kind of trouble, and then they treated her presentation like it was something
icky,” said Bonnie Jones, mother of the Mt. Woodson Elementary School
student. “Harvey Milk was an
elected official in this state and an important person in history. To
say my daughter’s presentation is
‘sex education’ because Harvey Milk happened to be gay is completely
wrong.”
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 and superintendent
grossly misinterpreted school policy.
They illegally censored student speech protected by the First Amendment
and the California Education Code,” said David
Blair-Loy, Legal Director of the ACLU of San Diego and
Imperial
Counties. “Writing or talking about a gay
historical figure who advocated for equal rights for LGBT Californians is in no
way the same thing as talking about sex, and school officials should
not pretend
otherwise.”
The Ramona Unified School
District policy on “Family Life/Sex
Education” reads in part:
“(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…”
“Schools that act as if any mention
of the existence of gay people is something too controversial or ‘sensitive’ to
discuss are doing a disservice to their students,” said Elizabeth
Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s
national LGBT Project. “This school
completely overstepped its bounds in trying to silence Natalie Jones
by shunting
her presentation off to a lunch recess time and misusing a school policy to
justify requiring parental permission to see it.”
In today’s letter, the ACLU is
demanding that the school:
·
Apologize in writing to Natalie
Jones and send a letter about that apology to all the parents who were sent the
principal’s letter about the presentation
·
Give
Natalie Jones an opportunity to give her presentation to all the other members
of her independent research project class
·
Clarify
in writing that the parental notification and permission portion of the “Family
Life/Sex Education” policy only applies to the curricula identified as “course
content” for “Family Life/Sex Education instruction”
The ACLU is giving the district
five days to respond or it may file a lawsuit on Bonnie and Natalie Jones’s
behalf.
Harvey Milk, one of Time Magazine’s “Time 100 Heroes and
Icons of the 20th Century” in 1999, has been the subject of several books, an
opera, a documentary film that won the 1984 Academy Award for Documentary
Feature, and a feature film released last year that won two Academy Awards for
Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor.
Milk’s birthday, the subject of a bill pending in the California legislature
that would make it a state holiday, is this Friday.
For additional information,
including copies of Natalie Jones’s presentation on Harvey Milk, the school’s
letter to parents, and the Ramona U.S.D. “Family Life/Sex Education” policy,
visit http://www.aclu.org/Milk.
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Moscow’s mayor tried to crush the city’s gay pride parade. In doing so, he did the cause of gay rights in Russia a huge service Russian gay rights …
Russian gay rights campaigners are toasting Moscow’s homophobic mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, after he ordered the banning and violent suppression of last Saturday’s Slavic gay pride parade in the Russian capital – just hours before the Eurovision song contest was staged in the city.
“Luzhkov has done more than anyone to publicise gay rights in Russia,” beamed Nikolai Alekseev, the gay parade organiser, as we chatted on Sunday afternoon following his release from nearly 24 hours of police detention:
By stopping the gay parade he has provoked massive media coverage of our fight against homophobia. The Russian media has been full of reports about gay issues for the last week. This has hugely increased public awareness and understanding of gay people.
Slowly, we are eroding homophobic attitudes. Through this media visibility, we are helping to normalise queer existence. After our successive gay protests in Moscow since 2006, people are less shocked about homosexuality. We have a long way to go, but gradually we are winning hearts and minds, especially among younger Russians.
We ought to give Luzhkov an award. His violation of our right to protest has given us a remarkable platform, with day-after-day of publicity about lesbian gay human rights. It is the equivalent of about 200m roubles (£4m pounds) in free advertising.
AfteSee Thank you Mayor Luzhkov
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Muslims in Britain have zero tolerance of homosexuality, says poll
Muslims in Britain have zero tolerance towards homosexual acts compared to their counterparts in France and Germany, according to a survey published today.
The Gallup poll features the results of telephone and face-to-face interviews with Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK, France and Germany and is designed to measure global attitudes towards people from different faith traditions.
It shows that British Muslims hold more conservative opinions towards homosexual acts, abortion, viewing pornography, suicide and sex outside marriage than European Muslims, polling markedly lower when asked if they believed these things were morally acceptable.
The most dramatic contrast was found in attitudes towards homosexuality. None of the 500 British Muslims interviewed believed that homosexual acts were morally acceptable. 1,001 non-Muslim Britons were interviewed.
By comparison, 35% of French Muslims found homosexual acts to be acceptable. A question on pornography also elicited different reactions, with French and German Muslims more likely than British Muslims to believe that watching or reading pornography was morally acceptable. See Muslims in Britain have zero tolerance of homosexuality, says poll
guardian.co.uk * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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On gay rights, two steps forward, one step back in the Alabama house
In a headspinning series of moves today, the Alabama House of Representatives today voted to add gays and bisexuals to the list of classes of people protected by a state hate crimes act — and passed a resolution praising Miss California for speaking out against gay marriage.
In a 46-41 vote today, the Alabama house approved a bill sponsored by Montgomery Democrat Alvin Holmes that would make it a crime to attack someone because of the victim’s sexual orientation. The bill updates a law passed in 1994 that included race, colour, religion and national origin.
Also today, the body passed on a voice vote a resolution sponsored by Republican Montgomery Representative Jay Love praising Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean. Love said she stuck to her convictions even though it may have cost her the pageant.
At the Miss USA pageant earlier this week, Prejean, competing as Miss California, was asked by gay blogger Perez Hilton, a judge, if she believe same-sex marriage should be allowed across the country. She said: “in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there but that’s how I was raised.”
Hilton later said on his blog that she gave “the worst answer in pageant history”, and that she lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage but because “she’s a dumb bitch”. See
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‘Sir, are you queer?’
‘I used to think gay people were wrong when I was young. I had that stereotype, and I’d say ‘you’re gay’, not in a good way, like it was, you know, eurghh,” says 17-year-old Moe Salim, an A-level student at Welling school in Bexley. “Now, I’d think, why would anyone say that? It’s really unnecessary. I’m black, and if someone said to me ‘you’re a nigger’, well, it’s the same.”
“I’ve got a family member who is [gay], and I hear people talking about it like it’s a bad thing and I go mad,” says his classmate Charlotte Baterip, 17. “People still use the word ‘gay’ as an insult.”
Last December, both sixth-form students helped their drama teacher, Ian Elmslie, organise a school-wide campaign to raise awareness of homophobic bullying. Hearing their invited guest, Sir Ian McKellen, speak to the entire school at a morning assembly gave, they agree, an extraordinary insight into the way society has related to gay people over the years.
“You learned that there’s still so much prejudice against it. You could see everyone in assembly thinking hard,” says sixth-former Chelsea Fulbrook, 16.
Elmslie, who says he was asked, “Sir, are you queer?” on his first day at Welling school, has worked to encourage not just tolerance, but “acceptance and appreciation” of gay people within and outside the school community ever since. See
‘Sir, are you queer?’
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Beijing’s ‘happy couples’ launch campaign for same-sex marriages
With her bouquet of roses and fluffy white dress, Han Xincheng looked the epitome of the glamorous modern Chinese bride. But, although her parents had been pressing her to marry, the photographs were not what they might have expected: she is gazing adoringly at another woman, surrounded by onlookers.
The series of “wedding pictures” staged by lesbians and gay men in the heart of Beijing might not raise eyebrows any longer in most western countries, but they are evidence that attitudes are finally changing in a country where gay sex was illegal until 1997 and homosexuality classified as a mental illness until four years later.
There is still no legal protection against discrimination in China and few role models: no mainstream figures are openly gay. Yet now parts of China’s gay population are calling for the right to wed – and meeting with some sympathy.
“Many reactions were quite positive and some people even came up to give us their blessing,” said Han, though she acknowledges that overall the public reaction was negative.
SeeBeijing’s ‘happy couples’ launch campaign for same-sex marriages
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Gay Iraqi could face death penalty if deportation goes ahead
A gay Iraqi man due for deportation tomorrow has been told by the UK Border Agency to conduct his relationships “in private” on his return to Iraq, where homosexuality is punishable by death.
Campaign group Iraqi LGBT says the asylum seeker will become the seventh gay Iraqi to be returned to the country by the UK, despite the country being one of only nine in the world where homosexual people are executed.
Though a ruling was made in September 2007 allowing two gay Iraqis to remain in the UK, campaigners working on behalf of the man facing deportation tomorrow say his case was held too long ago to benefit from the change in case law achieved in 2007.
Keith Best, the director of the Immigration Advisory Service, told the Guardian that the government ought to give the asylum seeker a fresh hearing.
The United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA) has said that the man’s homosexuality did not form the basis of his original asylum application in 2001 and that his subsequent conviction for seeking to stay in the country illegally makes him an untrustworthy defendant, undermining his claim to be gay. See Gay Iraqi could face death penalty if deportation goes ahead
American Chronicle, CA
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