Setback in Teaching Diversity & Homosexual Rights

Efforts at legitimate sexual diversity have faced a serious set-back. Detroit Michigan Federal District Judge Gerald E. Rosen has ordered the public school system of Ann Arbor to pay $102,738 in legal fees to the Thomas More Law Center. The Law Center defended the bigotry of a student Betsy Hansen who wanted to express her homophobic religious views at her high school's Diversity Week program. The Judge compared the school officials to Nazis-- talk about nonsense!

The high school was promoting true enlightenment, that homosexuality is a healthy and respectable lifestyle-- even from a religious perspective. This Catholic girl wanted to add her two cents, even if it would bring hurt to homosexual students and faculty! The school had every right to censor her speech to racial matters and to punish her for rigidity and prejudice.

Now the judge faults the school for censoring her hate speech. Who do we allow to talk in our schools next-- white supremacists?

The Pioneer High School staff prevented Hansen from expressing her Roman Catholic view on homosexuality at the "Homosexuality and Religion" panel, and they censored a speech she was asked to give on ''What Diversity Means to Me.''
Her religious view toward homosexuality was a ''negative'' message and would ''water-down'' the ''positive'' religious message that should be conveyed– that homosexual behavior is not immoral or sinful.

The federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center claimed that school officials violated Hansen's constitutional rights to freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and the equal protection of the law. Further, the lawsuit alleged that school officials coerced students to accept the religious belief that homosexual activity is not immoral or sinful in violation of the Constitution. Next the courts will tell us that we cannot teach against black-haters or woman haters.

School officials prudently selected religious leaders who endorsed pro-homosexual "religious" belief to sit on the panel. The schoolgirl's request to have a Catholic homophobic Papist on the panel was denied.

Here is the introduction to Judge Gerald Rosen's 70-page opinion:

"This case presents the ironic, and unfortunate, paradox of a public high school celebrating 'diversity' by refusing to permit the presentation to students of an 'unwelcomed' viewpoint on the topic of homosexuality and religion, while actively promoting the competing view. This practice of 'one-way diversity,' unsettling in itself, was rendered still more troubling – both constitutionally and ethically – by the fact that the approved viewpoint was, in one manifestation, presented to students as religious doctrine by six clerics (some in full garb) quoting from religious scripture. In its other manifestation, it resulted in the censorship by school administrators of a student's speech about "what diversity means to me," removing that portion of the speech in which the student described the unapproved viewpoint.''

The judge ruled that the public school system and a number of its employees violated Hansen's constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the equal protection of the law. Trying to shut the door, he also resolved that school officials violated the Establishment Clause in welcoming pro-gay clergy to hold a panel on "Homosexuality and Religion."

If this girl really has a problem, then why is she even in a public high school. They should have sent her to a parochial school where she could be endoctrinated as much as the homophobes want. Sounds to me like one of the narrow-minded home-schoolers got out by mistake!

We need judges that will overturn such verdicts! It is anti-American to be anti-gay! We can only hope that Diversity Week will be restored in the near future and that it will be practiced in all our schools.