If you’re a public high school student and would like to know more about your school’s web filter, read the story of what one kid found and check out this video showing how to test whether your school is illegally filtering content and how to report censorship.
The first time I saw those signs, with their vivid neon colors and crude images of stick figures, was 16 years ago. "Fags Die, God Laughs." "No Tears for Queers." "God Hates Fags." Like most people seeing a Westboro Baptist Church picket for the first time, I was shocked, then outraged. It happened at the funeral of a friend who had died of AIDS. Seeing those signs left me in tears.
Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield is well known for such antics as claiming AIDS resulted from “one guy screwing a monkey” and trying to weasel his way into the state’s Black Legislative Caucus. But perhaps Campfield’s greatest source of notoriety is the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a nasty proposed law he’s introduced and reintroduced every chance he’s gotten during his nine years in the legislature. In its earlier incarnations, the bill would have banned any discussion of sexuality except for heterosexuality in public schools up through the eighth grade. This week, Campfield has brought “Don’t Say Gay” back yet again, with a misleading new name (the “Classroom Protection Act”) and a particularly disturbing new addition: The bill now seeks to require school nurses and guidance professionals to notify the parents of any student they work with who identifies as gay or questioning.
Today is Banned Websites Awareness Day – a designated day within Banned Books Week – which is sponsored by our friends at the American Association of School Librarians and designed to raise awareness of the overly restrictive blocking of legitimate, educational websites and academically useful social networking tools in schools and school libraries. At the ACLU LGBT Project, this is a subject near and dear to our hearts, and today we’re releasing a new report about our work to fight back against banned websites.
Last February, the ACLU LGBT Project launched the "Don't Filter Me" campaign to take on the problem of public schools censoring LGBT-friendly content on the web. Today — which just happens to also be Banned Websites Awareness Day — we released a report describing the enormous progress we have made in a little over six months. The "Don't Filter Me" campaign has been responsible for instituting major changes in school policy nationwide, and has influenced major web software filtering companies to change their products so that they do not block positive LGBT materials.
Today is the Day of Silence, an annual, student-led day of action involving hundreds of thousands of students around the country.The students who participate take a day-long vow of silence to reflect the bullying, harassment and discrimination — in effect, the silencing — of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students in America’s schools.
As students across America return to classes, we at the ACLU are preparing to help with yet another school year of defending LGBT students from censorship, harassment, attempts to block them from forming Gay-Straight Alliance clubs, and other types of discrimination. While nobody loves doing homework, LGBT students might find it’s pretty useful to do a bit of research about what their legal rights are in school and how they can stand up for themselves. To help with that, we have lots of information available online.
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:
Please note that by playing this clip You Tube and Google will place a long-term cookie on your computer. Please see You Tube's privacy statement on their website and Google's privacy statement on theirs to learn more. To view the ACLU's privacy statement, click here.
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.
