With her parents’ approval, a lesbian teen-ager in New York wore a T-shirt to school that said “Barbie is a Lesbian.”
The school suspended her, the girl’s mother sued the school, and now a religious-right group is defending the school.
It seems to me that Barbie has always been a less-than-ethical role model for women, and so I welcome a T-shirt that pokes fun at the doll. However, the T-shirt does not seem to to convey a clear and constructive message.
Nevertheless, the religious right is displaying some hypocrisy. It routinely champions free-speech and parents’-rights causes on behalf of conservative Christian parents. Apparently the right is selective when to uphold parental values — and when to attack them.