Some day, one hopes not too far in the future, when U.S. culture has unequivocally abandoned the ancient fear of gay human beings, when understanding, fairness and respect has banished ignorance and hate, when same sex marriages are recognized as manifestations of loyalty, commitment and love rather than perversions of nature, and when no American feels the need to hide his or her sexuality, and thus feels no compulsion to trumpet it either, we will look back on such societal embarrassments as the Flour Bluff Intermediate School District as we do now on past purveyors of child labor, forced sterilization, involuntary human experimentation, mistreatment of women, and racism, and wonder, “What was the matter with those people? How did they get that way?”

Or, come to think of it, we could ask that question right now.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca “Nikki” Peet, a senior at Flour Bluffs High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, high school senior requested the she be permitted to launch a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school. The Equal Access Act, a federal law passed in 1984, requires schools receiving federal funding to offer “fair opportunities for students to form student-led  groups, regardless of their religious, political and philosophical leanings.” If the school district was going to allow any extracurricular groups, it had to allow Nikki’s.

So it shut down all extracurricular clubs at the school. Continue reading →