Remember Tyler Chase Harper and anti-gay T-Shirts? Harper is the blond teen ADF model/activist-in-training who sued the Poway School District because they wouldn’t let him wear an anti-gay T-shirt to school two days in a row. We’ve told you about him and his crusade before.
Harper has now graduated and has passed his “shameful” torch to his sister, Kelsie who – one supposes – also wants to wear a shirt condemning her fellow students.
Well, this time was no different than the last. The judge, again, said that giving students the ability to attend class without condemnation is within the rights of a school. And so poor Kelsie will also be disallowed from being able to amend the Day of Silence’s message of “We support all students” to include “except for the homos”.
Of course it isn’t over. Because with each legal appeal comes a press release. And a chance for the ADF to make a financial appeal to protect our good Christian students from the homossseeeexxxxual agenda.
A minor typo Timothy… it’s “Kelsie”
ooops, thanks.
First Amendment purist that I am, I do not agree with this decision, but this line of reasoning was actually developed by conservative justices who developed a “disruption” exemption for public schools. But the same reasoning applies to confederate flags and swastikas. And now, this.
Alec – Reread Tinker v. Des Moines which I’m reasonably sure is the decision you’re referring to. The “material and substantial” disruption standard doesn’t seem to apply to people REACTING to the speech, but rather the speech itself.
I refer specifically to the end of Justice Fortas’ opinion (and throughout it really) where he says: “As we have discussed, the record does not demonstrate any facts which might reasonably have led school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, and no disturbances or disorders on the school premises in fact occurred. These petitioners merely went about their ordained rounds in school. Their deviation consisted only in wearing on their sleeve a band of black cloth, not more than two inches wide. They wore it to exhibit their disapproval of the Vietnam hostilities and their advocacy of a truce, to make their views known, and, by their example, to influence others to adopt them. They neither interrupted school activities nor sought to intrude in the school affairs or the lives of others. They caused discussion outside of the classrooms, but no interference with work and no disorder. In the circumstances, our Constitution does not permit officials of the State to deny their form of expression. “
sorry for being long winded, I don’t want to get into another huge debate about this like last time, so I’ll just say that I think the court is wrong on the law this time and that it sets a dangerous precedent, I’ve always believed the answer to negative speech is more speech not a stifling of discussion no matter how harsh the tone.
Hi Kendal,
I’d venture to say that this part, “They neither interrupted school activities nor sought to intrude in the school affairs or the lives of others.” of Fortas’ opinion is the difference between the Tinker case and the Harper case in this post.
I think in the case of Harper, we can reasonably assume that his “speech” (the shirt in this case) did seek to interrupt school activities and intrude on the lives of others, especially considering the day in which he wore it. The words fairly obviously were harsh and intentionally sought disruption–much different from a silent protest of wearing an arm band with no words or message.
Brady – You cannot intentionally seek disruption when someone doesn’t have to look at you. I mean, I DO find Harper’s opinion repugnant and I think the school’s heart was in the right place but lets reverse it. Lets say we’re talking about a school in say deep in AFA-land, Tupelo, Mississippi, and a student wore a T-shirt that said “The Bible WRONG, love doesn’t have a gender.”
Obviously that’s less harsh than the abomination crap but is it any less disruptive to tell someone their sincerely held faith (as opposed to our sincerely held sexuality) and the book they believe to be the Truth is wrong?
Again, things were very harsh last time and I’m not trying to argue the issue so I’m going to try to leave it here but that’s just my opinion.
err… just a clarification because I think someone could easily misinterpret. By “sincerely held sexuality” I’m not saying that we are (well, most of us posting here) not really gay. I’m saying that there is no objective measure in nature for sexuality, it just IS, or seems to be. Some animals (since that’s what humans are) seem to like males, some females, humans just choose to interpret it and give it a more mystical meaning, first heterosexuals who proclaim traditional marriage to be superior and now homosexuals who (understandably) don’t like people attacking their self perceptions.
Please remember, folks, that the school was also considering the previous year in which a fight had broken out.
These were the “facts which might reasonably have led school authorities to forecast substantial disruption”
One of the things that I value about our readers and commenters is that they do tend to hold principle as more valuable than winning a skirmish in the culture war. Many of our commenters will leap to defend the rights of those who oppose them out of the defense of freedom. This principle above policy is not often seen in those who oppose the rights and equality of gay people – especially those we see leading the ex-gay movement.
Hey Kendall. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get heated on this discussion, but I’d like to make one point. if you want to stop there, no problem with me, but I’m also open to more.
I’m of the belief that you can intentionally seek disruption even when someone doesn’t have to look at you (and actually in this case, I’d argue that students probably did have to look at Chase given that they were forced to be in the same classroom as him).
If someone wore a shirt or carried a sign that said something derrogatory about a students mother, or posted such things in areas around the schools, the student in question and other students certainly don’t have to look, but it’s pretty clear to me that the reason behind such a posting would be to seek disruption in some way. To tell the kid in question that he doesn’t have to look is being too dismissive of the school environment, I think.
Oh, Kendall, haven’t seen much of you here until recently.
Of those that support Harper’s right to wear this T-shirt I wonder how many of you would support his right to wear such a T-shirt if it was anti-black or anti-Jewish – if it said being black is an abomination and blacks have no souls because they aren’t fully human (as religious leaders once taught) or if it said Jews are Christ-killing abominations. I find it difficult to believe any of you would be proudly supporting someone’s right to put out that message and yet its no different than Harper’s anti-gay hate.
I would support his/her right to wear an anti-black, anti-Semitic, etc t-shirt. Even during Black History Month or Rosh Hashanah, etc. I would also support– nay, encourage!– his fellow students starting a t-shirt or button campaign with messages of a pro-tolerance nature.
The sledgehammer of Law is not always the best tool to use, particularly with this kind of social problem. I think what needs to be done is to reframe the situation so that all the kid ends up doing is demanding the right to make a total imbecile out of him/herself.
Liadan,
While your argument might seem evenhanded, it’s unrealistic. You assume that there would be more students supportive of the particular minority group under attack and that they would leap to their defense. This simply isn’t true in many cases.
And even if it were, schools try very hard to avoid confrontation on campus, not encourage it.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that in some campuses in Los Angeles if some students wore anti-black t-shirts (or even black-power t-shirts) and the school did nothing it would result in a race war on campus that might well spill out into the greater community.
While it may seem very libertarian to have a policy of equal abuse, remember that children don’t have a choice whether to be in that environment. The market place of ideas cannot control social abuse when the participant is not allowed to avoid the situation.
The sledgehammer of Law is not always the best tool to use, particularly with this kind of social problem.
I’m not going to jump into this discussion to the extent I did the previous one. However, I would like to point out that students in K-12 do not enjoy full civil rights, esp that of free speech, while on campus. What I would support for those in the public square, I would not necessarily support for those in a compulsory situation such as a high school campus.
I fully and almost without condition support the US style First Amendment protections, but this really is a different matter.
Brady – Well, I do think there is an enormous difference between targeting individuals directly (or indirectly which I’ll get to in a second) and targeting groups.
To illustrate what I mean, consider two schools. One a tolerant, ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse school with a thriving GSA (or alternately large Hispanic population). Now consider the other school, also a large school, but mostly white, mostly protestant, and mostly from one ethnic group. There is also only 1 openly gay couple with no other openly gay students.
In the first case I’d tend to think hate speech like Harper’s would be seen as less directed at individuals than in the second case. Numbers DO matter and in an environment like a highschool the difference between say 2 and 20 is enormous, I should know because my highschool was very much like the second case (although the people were very nice… for the most part). I think that targeting individuals is wrong (I also happen to think targeting groups is wrong but I don’t believe in stopping that if its non-violent) and if it was clearly only directed at a single student or specifically at a club (say he wore a sign “all members of the GSA are going to hell”) rather than his more general shirt (which talked about the school supporting “what god has condemned” in his view as well as biblical verses from the NIV probably because that translation specifically mentions homosexuals) then I’d have a problem because he’d be singling out a specific group of students rather than a broad class of people.
Randi – You’re right, I haven’t had a whole lot of free time for a variety of personal reasons but I’ve posted here and there on the site, just not with any regularity.
And again, as I was saying to Brady I think it does depend on the context that you say things. For example, in my High school it would be unthinkable to say anything approaching a pejorative towards African Americans (beyond the human decency reasons, I think white guilt more than anything stopped a few of the racists in my school more than anything at least that I saw, not that I’m black but I hung out a lot with people who happened to be… they were awesome at Chess) but stereotypes about gays and Hispanics and even the occasional Asian joke were relatively normal for students simply because those groups were not largely represented. Of course, those stereotypes were wrong but the teachers at my school could only do so much.
Then again, why should I be surprised? We all know that if a student says “that’s so gay” the teachers would react differently than if you said “that’s just like a” n-word (not that the latter should be tolerated, I’m just saying the former should’ve been stamped out long ago).
But then, that was MY school, and my unique experience. I say if someone wants to make an anti-black t-shirt then they’re probably doing so at their own risk. I saw an article about “Prussian Blue” who are twin white supremacist teenage singers. They’d just moved into a neighborhood somewhere in Colorado (they moved there because it was an all white city) and immediately when the neighbors found out they responded with flyers telling them to leave, they weren’t wanted, etc.
I guess my point in my rambling is that people might not be as tolerant of negative speech as we might believe, in fact I guarantee you most people I know would be SHOCKED if someone used the n-word towards another human being or displayed overtly racist tendencies. Homophobic… I dunno, I think its on the wane but not everywhere. Still, I don’t think closing the door on debate is going to make it easier for people to accept us.
Schools are entitled to have school uniforms and dress codes. I know that dress codes at schools ban gang colors, hats indoors, exposure of various body parts, graphically violent or sexual images on clothing, etc. Anyone who has high school or middle school students (like me) gets copies of these policies at the beginning of the school year and must acknowledge that I have seen them and realize that they are going to be enforced.
It is a school. If the situation really got out of hand, I am sure the parents in the community would just end up imposing a uniform: white collar shirt with sleeves and khaki pants, etc.
What the kids wear out of school is an area that you could probably only go after if it violated public decency codes.
If I recall… the last time we tackled this at XGW we ended up with a very long “arguament of the beard”. And it got gruesome, and rather insulting, and eventually tiresome.
> is there anyone who feels that ALL free speech in ALL circumstances is ALWAYS to be permitted?
> is there anyone who feels that NO free speech should EVER be permitted in ANY circumstances?
No takers for either?
OK — so in that case… none of us are at odds with a core principle about freedom of speech, but merely expressing what is the sensible application of free speech. Where one wishes to draw the line, and why, will vary… so please, people, be generous with each other’s viewpoints; and try to explain why you draw the line where you do. That helps, a lot.
Sorry, I’m just channelling David Roberts… in his “Board Mom” mode 🙂
(I’m a wee bit bogged down with work at the moment, but lest anyone think I cut and run, I figured I’d reply.)
Lest anyone think I don’t know of what I speak, it was only four years ago that I graduated from a very small private conservative Christian high school in the Bible Belt. I’m well aware of what it’s like to be outnumbered in a hostile environment. (It’s why I was closeted until college.)
Nevertheless, it does gay students no help to be protected by forbidding other students’ speech, in part because (a) the abuse just goes underground and off-campus and (b) it gives fuel to the charge that “them dang libruls don’t want THE TRUTH to be known!”
In my case, given that I had a reputation as a flaming liberal anyway, I was in a position to challenge other students on a personal basis, and when the opportunity arose, I ended up doing a report on why homosexuality isn’t a sin. (I did the same thing with an evolution report in biology when we were taught creationism in history class. I’m an equal-opportunity rabble-rouser.)
I opened a lot more minds by talking to my fellow students and the faculty like they were people with brains instead of just political opponents to be outmaneuvered instead of trying to go over their heads. (Frankly, if I’d tried to get anti-gay speech administratively banned, I would’ve failed miserably because– surprise!– our admin was anti-everything-not-heterosexually-Republican!)
As well, these kids may not have full LEGAL civil rights, but in educational terms we do very little good by teaching them about their civil rights in the abstract and then denying them in practice. If there are demonstrable pragmatic concerns, like the race war scenario, those are easily covered by recognized limitations on speech already explained by Supreme Court decisions about yelling “fire” in crowded theaters and, as mentioned, Tinker vs. Des Moines covers a lot of that already.
Liadan,
I’m glad you had the strength of character to withstand any challenges. Not all children are blessed with a rabble-rouser attitude. Some don’t fight back, some kill themselves instead.
And please recall that a private high school and a public high school are very different. I’ve attended both and they are night and day apart (and this in an area with VERY good public schools).
One of the best things about private school is that you know that you have choices. If it becomes unbearable, you can just leave.
Also, there is the assurance that the parents of the students in a private school are invested in the safety of the space. Both security and safety are easier to maintain. A threat of expulsion is taken seriously by the parents and students know in advance that if they beat another kid it will cost their parents money.
While I do generally err on the side of civil freedoms, I think we should avoid simply dismissing the form of terrorism that some gay kids are subjected to in school. And if we can have “recognized limitations on speech” for race issues, I don’t know why orientation issues are somehow less important. If my impression is correct, this is the biggest form of bullying on campuses.
I am not convinced that the school made the best decision. But I’m disappointed at how little concern we are giving to the victims of Harper’s animosity.
Honestly I think the BIGGEST victim of Harper’s animosity is Harper himself. I don’t deny that anti-gay slurs can be painful, especially for a teen struggling with their sexual identity but its been my experience there are two ways you can deal with people: Accept them as they are with whatever flaws you perceive or condemn and avoid people who are different than yourself.
I go back to a friend of mine, a good person, nice as can be. However, there was one thing that (at least initially) set him off. He grew up hearing very negative commentaries towards homosexuals and believed that homosexuality is immoral, and “icky.” Shortly after I told him I’m gay he left a series of biblical quotes on my IM. I DID try to talk with him and I think I got through to a point (though he would occasionally still have difficulty with it).
Finally, he took about two months off from talking to me, he had a lot of personal issues to work out for himself. It took him a long time but he realized that we had a pretty good friendship going before he found out my sexuality and that it wasn’t important who I liked, but who I was as a person that mattered to him.
So I think that Harper’s biggest victim is himself, because I think he’s missing out on meeting a lot of wonderful people because of an aspect of our personality he doesn’t care for.
On a slightly different, but tangentially related note in regards to civil discussion between gay marriage advocates and opponents I thought this was interesting.