You may recall last month when the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, the ACLU LGBT Project, and the ACLU of Tennessee first started schooling some school districts in Tennessee for using web filtering software that illegally blocked dozens of LGBT rights nonprofits and other informational sites — while so-called "reparative therapy" (pray away the gay!) websites were wide open to student surfing.
Ryan Marlatt, Teddy Eggers, and three other friends had stopped for lunch at a McDonald's restaurant on East Market Street last July while visiting Louisville for the weekend. While they waited for their food to be prepared, an employee behind the counter referred to them as "faggots" to another employee. When Marlatt and Eggers objected to the slur and asked to speak with a manager, the employee who had called them "faggots" started arguing with them, repeatedly calling them "faggots" in front of other customers and calling one of them a "cocksucker" and "bitch." Here's a video of Ryan and Teddy telling the story of what happened to them:
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Prom season is in full swing, and we at the ACLU are seeing an uptick in calls and emails from students whose schools have either tried to stop them from bringing same-sex dates or tried to enforce rigidly gender-stereotyped dress codes. Both are illegal. As Deb Price of the Detroit News pointed out in her column today, the ACLU affiliates in both Ohio and Mississippi have recently gotten schools to back down from discriminatory prom policies. Now the ACLU LGBT Project has created a new resource to help LGBT students take fight for their legal right to enjoy prom into their own hands.
Anti-gay marriage bans have certainly gotten a lot of attention this election cycle, but there's one other state law on the ballot to which LGBT people should be paying attention.
If passed, Initiated Act 1 in Arkansas would ban anyone - gay or straight - who lives with a partner he or she isn't married to from fostering or adopting children. Child welfare professionals agree that blanket bans like this only harm children by reducing the pool of potential homes. The proponents of this ballot question originally presented it to the public as if they were all about protecting children too.
The LGBT Project and the ACLU of Florida recently completed a trial in juvenile court in Miami challenging a Florida law that bars lesbians and gay men from adopting in the state. The ACLU is representing a gay man, Martin Gill, who, along with his partner of eight years, has been raising two foster children. The ACLU is asking the court to declare the Florida ban unconstitutional and allow our client to adopt the two brothers that the couple have been raising for the past four years.
Yesterday the LGBT community lost one of its pioneers when 87-year-old lesbian activist Del Martin passed away in San Francisco with her partner of 55 years — and wife of two months — Phyllis Lyon at her side.
Del and Phyllis were among the plaintiffs in the combined lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and several other civil rights organizations and individuals that won the right to marry for same-sex couples earlier this summer, and they were the first same-sex couple to be married in San Francisco on June 16, 2008, after the California Supreme Court overturned that state's ban on marriage for couples like Del and Phyllis. But that was only her most recent step in a lifetime of advances for LGBT people, more of which you can learn about here.
As students head back to school, things are a bit different these days at Ponce de Leon High School in the Florida panhandle. Following an ACLU lawsuit over the summer, anti-gay censorship by school officials is no longer being tolerated, and the school has a new principal. We’ve told you about this case before, but in case you missed it, this new story from the Associated Press tells a bit more about why a young woman named Heather Gillman decided to stand up for her LGBT classmates and the First Amendment, and how her small town is still a difficult place for gay kids and their friends to grow up:
When a high school senior told her principal that students were taunting her for being a lesbian, he told her homosexuality is wrong, outed her to her parents and ordered her to stay away from children.
He suspended some of her friends who expressed their outrage by wearing gay pride T-shirts and buttons at Ponce de Leon High School, according to court records. And he asked dozens of students whether they were gay or associated with gay students.
The American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the district on behalf of a girl who protested against Principal David Davis, and a federal judge reprimanded Davis for conducting a "witch hunt" against gays. Davis was demoted, and school employees must now go through sensitivity training.
And despite all that, many in this conservative Panhandle community still wonder what, exactly, Davis did wrong.
Here’s hoping the folks in Ponce de Leon eventually learn that the same Constitution that protects their right to their views about LGBT people guarantees the right of LGBT people to express their point of view, too.
A recent Florida federal court decision in an ACLU case did a lot more than simply make advocates for both reproductive freedom and for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights very happy: It signaled that the days when folks could get away with making outlandish anti-LGBT arguments are going, going, and almost gone.
In her contribution to the ACLU's online symposium in celebration of LGBT Pride, Rachel Maddow, Air America host and MSNBC commentator, talked to Chris Hampton, Public Education Associate for the ACLU's LGBT Project.
Happy Pride! What accomplishments do you think the LGBT community should be most proud of this year?
So far the state where I grew up (California) and the state where I live (Massachusetts) and the state where I work most of the time (New York) have legalized, legalized, and agreed-to-recognize-other-states’ same-sex-marriages, respectively. I am accepting applications now from other states that want me to relocate, since apparently I am to second-class gay citizenship what Saint Patrick was to snakes.
Here at the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, we get calls and emails from students all over the country who have questions about things that have happened to them at school. Two things we've learned over the years are that many school administrators and teachers don't have the slightest clue about students' legal rights, and that some do know what students'
