Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: No More Catholic School Girl Fantasies
It’s a classic tale: two girls in cute uniforms can’t hold back their burning desire for each other and end up consummating their love behind the back of an overbearing nun/ English teacher. Well, the story is about to get racier, for Californians, that is.
A District Court of Appeal has ruledthat a private Lutheran school can expel students for having “a bond of intimacy” that was “characteristic of a lesbian relationship.” That’s the part of the story that didn’t make it into the story books: two girls consummate their love and then are expelled. They appear in front of a panel of judges who give religious schools carte blanche to expel all students who violate their “religious ideals.”
Despite my outrage at the ruling, it has long been understood that private actors are not subject to public restrictions on membership or public guarantees of fairness. If tax dollars didn’t create the school then they don’t have to let everyone in. That said, human rights legislation that is specific to a city or State can apply to private actors.
This ruling indicates that there is a legislative hole in California. Certain basic requirements should be handed to all private operators in the state. One of those requirements should be a commitment to eliminate certain backwards, hateful and destructive practices regarding admission or employment. Especially when the population you serve as vulnerable as school children.
Without these requirements, schools will be able to punish children for all sorts of actions. Not just the “sexy” lesbian ones.
A place could be all gay male with no straights and no woman. But at the same time have black, white or Asian gay men.
I went to a weekend knitting retreat at a privately funded place for gay male spirituality of any tradition in the world at the end of a country road in upstate New York. The men were mostly white and of probably mostly northern, middle and eastern European stock(pale white in other words). A Chinese American gay male knitter showed up. Nice guy and good knitter. Wish the knitting group was more varied and less totally “vanilla”. It wasn’t planned that way, but for some reason unknown to me, most of the male knitters I have encountered here and there have been just other light complexioned white guys like myself.
I did take knitting lessons once from an African American gay male who is very accomplished at knitting. But I had a Latino gay male knitter for a while at a knitting I run attended now by all straight women who all like gay men (just socially that is). But there are some non-white gay male knitters who are on a knitting and crocheting website. Hopefully some of those guys will start showing up and bring in some diversity to future gay male knitting retreats where I attended.
So in some cases these days, these things are “luck of the draw” and don’t always work out a certain planned way.
Well now, to prove they’re not operating under the doublestandard, they’re going to have to suspend or kick out hetero students who engage in amorous behavior, no kissing, touching, feeling, ever. Fair is fair.
If a private, no-public-funds school wants to kick out (or not let in) a black student, they do not have the right to do so, no matter how private they are. Why do we suddenly make concessions for homophobes? Even the mormon church had to start letting black people serve as clergy.
There have been a lot of comments how the school can do what it wants, and the parents don’t have to sent their kids their. Well hello, the parents probably sent their kids their because they have traditional religous beliefs!
If someone goes to a discriminatory country club, that’s their choice to be with those kinds of people. Kids are independant of their parents and have different thoughts and beliefs, but they do not have the final word in choosing their school, especially if they cannot voice their opinions because the parents themsevles discriminate against them. Precisely because it is parents who make the decision, we must make sure that there is no possibility of a parent sending thier kid into a harmful situation.
If an abusive parent beat their child and wanted to send them to some school where children were given harsh corperal punishment, we wouldn’t allow that. It is society’s responsibility to make sure that kids are not abused. We also have to make sure that kids are not discriminated against or hurt mentally. Because the kids who are most effected by the school’s policty do not make the decision of where they go, we have to make sure that there is equality and protection anywhere they can possibly go. We have to make sure that any institution calling itself a school is really a safe place for kids to learn, and not some bigoted, abusive system that works to the parents’ benefit, but not to the students’.
How mean and unnecessary to expel these girls. The church will no doubt cause them harm in this process. The church will continue to be discriminatory just like the boy scouts as long as society allows it. Evil Triumphs when good people remain silent.
I think these kind of schools if they expel a student should have to do it in a sensative way. They should be offered the option of non-religious therapy so the kids can get on with their lives.
Tom in Long Beach
(Who once did something on a Christian School Campus dorm, That would have gotten my date kicked out).
don’t send your kid to a privately funded private school if you know its standards and mission statement and don’t like those standards or mission-statements.
Opposite side of coin may something like a gay place of accommodations that doesn’t want straights to patronize it and has policies against such so it can keep an all gay environment and people maybe gay people could feel freer to enjoy a clothing optional environment and maintain a gay vibe.
And if a privately funded place says upfront it is all-lesbian why would males gay or straight want to be there?
Same as why would females whether gay or straight want to be at a privately funded place or group that says upfront that it wants to be all gay male?
As long as a place IS PRIVATELY FUNDED AND TAKES NO GOVERNEMT MONEY AND HAS NO TAX-FREE STATUS and is totally participant-supported and has as its own stated mission and purpose to be an environment where certain members of a group can spend time with just certain people with a singular goal or purpose like a gay male nudist camp etc, or an all straight woman’s group or whatever. These things create a certain environment where certain people can be themselves amongst people of a common interest, goal or affinity.
So long as no public money is involved or no tax-free status is involved and the funding is strictly private raised by people of a like mind, who cares? But in the case of this school if tax-free status is involved, GO AHEAD AND YANK ITS TAX-FREE STATUS, OF COURSE!
That widens range of choice for every one. People can have an all whatever it is they want to go to and associate with their own kind and somewhere else there can be an all-inclusive. Just like would you want fundies busting in and upsetting a school for gay kids insisting that their kids should come too just like Peter said. At what price forced and enforced inclusiveness for every last thing around us. Just like as a gay man, I have no desire to see how I can get my way into the heteros only allowed nudist camp in Crownsville, Maryland when I can go to Gunnison Beach at Gateway National Park on Sandy Hook in New Jersey where everyone gay, straight, family with kids are in the water all nude and no one gives a rat’s rear who is who or who is what, but at the same time none of that inclusiveness is rammed down people’s throats.
The difference between Gunnison nude beach and “the male is allowed in only if he brings a female with him” nudist camp is Gunnison is PUBLIC and the nudist camp is PRIVATE. Public facilities whether tax-free or operating with taxpayer dollars should be made to be inclusive of all.
And if you want to be restrictive, then that is your right as long as you are outright refusing either taxpayer money or refusing tax-free status so you may be free to follow whatever it is you hold most fervently to be important to you.
Realizing of course there are still country clubs that Obama can not play golf at… and country clubs that don’t allow women into certain areas during certain hours…This is no shock or surprise.
However, all the kids that have been bullied, gay or not, can just walk up to their oppressor and plant a kiss on them, no? Get them both kicked out? What’s the criteria? An Erasure CD and a zeal for life? A KD Lang poster? I work with kids every day and they all seem really gay in many different ways.
I was however also fired from a Catholic College for being a lesbian… These are private institutions, my father will often say, they have the right to do what they wish. No one’s regulating the KKK meetings? No one regulates when the freaks in my city get together and protest gay pride. Why would schools be any different, meetings where education is the supposed result.
Why force a gay kid to go to Catholic school anyway?
I understand the issue but there will be no freedom from homosexual biggotry until sexism is thoroughly tackled.
Meanwhile homosexual relationships, free of sexism, are seemingly the biggest threat.
I have to agree with Peter. One of the biggest weapons the fundies use against us is their perceived victim status. Implying that somehow an inclusive society will impact their religious freedoms. If a school accepts public money, then they cannot discriminate, that is already in the law. If they are private, then they can and do. This is just putting it in front of the public eye. Private schools can expel students for any reason, or no reason at all. It’s always been that way. And in a strange way, this could indeed come back and bite this school in the ass. There are lots of equality supporting people who have chosen to send their children to private schools, and just sort of ignore that the Catholic school they employ is homophobic, or whatever. If religion based private schools decide to pursue a gay student witch hunt, they may actually offend some of these parents, who might take more care in the future which school they send their students to. If the parents are okay with discrimination in this manner, then why the hell would anyone want to go there, or send their kids there? The public school system is where we are winning this battle, and there’s no doubt about that. GSA numbers have been on the rise for the last decade, and every time a public school tries to discriminate and goes to court about it, they lose.
Ms. Ruby-Sachs:
And when my gay friends and I want to open a progressive private schools for GLBT students, what recourse will WE have when several fundamentalist parents want to send their children?
The private school should have the right to demand whatever restrictions they wish – since the parents can send their children elsewhere if they do not approve of the restrictions.
That is what ‘freedom’ is all about/
As ignorant and backward as their rules may be – no one put a gun to the parents’ head to send their children there.
Well, if two girls can be expelled for their sexual orientation, this school might as well begin singling out other students as well. Why not expel the boy who wears his hair in a ponytail or the guy with one too many warts on his face?
This is absolutely outrageous! These girls were excised because they were gay. Their prior academic skill and dedication clearly meant no-never-mind to the principal and the teacher, who used the MySpace page these students had created OFF CAMPUS to back their petty ignorance. I could care less if tax dollars weren’t used to fund that school. Omitting students, based solely upon their sexual orientation, is wrong and should NOT be allowed!