Word: gays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...straight 17-year-old was outraged. Gillman responded to the suspensions - and the claim that the students had committed "illegal organizing" - by wearing a rainbow T-shirt and her cousin's rainbow belt to school. But soon after, when the school board prohibited expressions supporting equal rights for gay people at the school, Heather's mother, Ardena Gillman, decided more serious action was called for. She talked to the local branch of the American Civil Liberties union, which pursued the case on the grounds that Gillman's First Amendment rights were being violated. This week, in a two-day trial...
...Christine Sun, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU, credits the easy win largely to school principal David Davis, who had not exactly hidden his bias. He was reported to have asked a bullied student if she was gay; told her homosexuality was wrong; and forbidden her from wearing a pink breast cancer awareness bracelet that he alleged was a gay pride accessory. Though school board superintendent Steve Griffin denies Davis told the student homosexuality was wrong, calling it a "rumor that the kids took off running with," Davis did tell the court that rainbows and T-shirts with messages...
...supposed chaos that was to ensue if students were permitted to express themselves, so far there has been none. On Wedneday Heather wore a shirt to school that said "Gay? Fine by me." Others donned rainbow bracelets and shirts with messages like Got Pride? and Whatever! (under a group of rainbow colored people)."I was definitely worried about how teachers would not like me afterward," says Gillman, "but mostly the reaction has been very positive...
...legal victory was just the latest for increasingly visible gay and lesbian students (and their supportive straight friends) over the last decade. Gay straight alliances (GSAs) - extracurricular clubs that promote safety and tolerance in school - have grown from 200 in 1998 to more than 4,000 today. And students have won the right of GSAs to exist in more than a dozen court battles, even in relatively conservative regions like Salt Lake City, Utah and Orange County, Calif...
...effectively ends the academic debate over whether marriage inequality can be justified. By taking on virtually every objection to marriage rights for same-sex couples, even the most transparently bigoted, the court has produced a document that will be cited for generations. By comparison, the 2004 Massachusetts decision legalizing gay marriage in that state was much less ambitious. The California ruling will undoubtedly fuel the efforts of those who want to amend the U.S. and California constitutions to ban gay marriage, but for now it's enough to enjoy the court's bracingly simple money quote: "An individual's sexual...