Student Flyer Urges Ban of Gay Support Group

Administrators at Fountain Valley High School responded swiftly Wednesday to stop a handful of students from distributing flyers that call for the ban of a new gay and lesbian support group on campus and decry homosexuality as “abnormal,” “immoral,” “deviant” and “queer.”

Upon discovering the flyers, Vice Principal Ferren Christensen called two seniors into his office and ordered them to halt distribution because they did not have permission from the principal. The students said they plan to meet with Principal Gary Ernst this morning.

“If (homosexuality) is an abnormal behavior then they can choose a different way of life; if it is normal then there is no need for a support group,” the one-page flyer, signed “Future Good Boys of America,” reads. “These people lead to the societal and moral decay of our community and must be stopped!!”

Ernst and Christensen could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but Assistant Principal Tom Antal denounced the flyers as incendiary and inflammatory, and said administrators have tried to collect and destroy as many of them as possible.

“There’s no doubt that this is meant to foster some kind of reaction and to create a problem,” Antal said. “The intent of it doesn’t appear to be wholesome, it is definitely meant to agitate. . . . We don’t allow students to create a problem (or to distribute literature) that constitutes an attack on another student or group of students.”

About 30 students meet on Fridays during lunch in what is believed to be the only gay support group in an Orange County public school. Called the Fountain Valley Student Alliance, the group is not an official “club” because it does not relate to the curriculum, but it is allowed to meet on campus under a school district policy that lets religious and other non-school-affiliated clubs use school facilities.

Joe Khalil, 19, a senior at the school, said he and some friends founded Future Good Boys of America and printed 500 flyers at a local copy shop Monday because they do not want Fountain Valley High to be perceived as a “gay school” or to allow the gay and lesbian support group to meet on campus.

“They call us gay-bashers . . . they said we’re sending out hate letters, but I don’t think it’s a hate letter. . . . It’s not a prejudice. We just don’t want them around us,” Khalil said. “We don’t want it at our school. We can understand one or two people being gay, (but) it’s really sickening to have people walking around holding hands. All we want is just to move the club out of our school.”

Several other students who helped hand out the flyers said the gay and lesbian group would lead to fights among students.

“It’s going to create a lot of problems. It’s just going to get out of hand,” said senior Judy Smith. “If you want to have a gay club and touch your buddy, OK, but do it outside of school, not in.”

At school Wednesday, many classes discussed the flyers and the ongoing debate over the Student Alliance.

Students involved in the alliance said they were “disappointed” but not surprised by the flyers.

Michael Poff, an English teacher whose classroom the alliance uses, said he was most upset by the inaccuracies in the flyer: calling the group a “club,” for example.

“The whole point for the kids who started this group was to try and bring some sense of understanding and tolerance (to campus). To have such an ignorant, reactionary element . . . is abhorrent,” Poff said.