Attorneys for the
Okeechobee County school board in south Florida are
planning to enlist experts to testify about the "negative
effects of homosexual sex" in their fight to prevent a
gay-straight alliance from meeting at Okeechobee High
School.
"This is the most
rabidly homophobic response that the school board
could have taken," American Civil Liberties Union attorney
Robert Rosenwald said about a summary of the school
board's planned witness testimony in the upcoming
trial, according to a report from the Palm Beach
Post.
The ACLU is
representing the GSA and former Okeechobee High School
student Yasmin Gonzales in a suit claiming that the school
board's refusal to allow the alliance to meet on
campus while allowing other clubs violates federal
law.
The trial is
scheduled to start in March, but ACLU attorney Rosenwald
asked this week for the date to be moved back to September
in order to allow more time to prepare. A judge has
said the club can meet on school grounds while the
case works its way through the courts.
The school board
has not returned calls for comment, nor have their
attorneys released the names of the experts they plan to
use. They have argued that the alliance is a
"sex-based" club violating a Florida statute requiring
schools to teach abstinence "while teaching the
benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage."
Gonzalez has said
she and other students wanted to form the GSA to
provide a safe environment for students to talk about
homophobia and to promote tolerance of all students,
regardless of sexual orientation. Nationwide, more
than 3,000 GSAs are registered with the Gay, Lesbian,
and Straight Education Network. Rosenwald has called the
school board's planned testimony irrelevant, saying
that regardless of people's views on homosexuality,
the school board is obligated under federal law to allow
the alliance to meet on the school's campus. (The
Advocate)
