ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Gay Students’ Rights Must Be Affirmed

Some parents and students at Fountain Valley High School are putting an enormous amount of pressure on the school board to prevent a group of gay students from continuing to hold support meetings on campus.

The board should stand by the administration’s initial backing of the gay support group and affirm the rights of the students to meet without interference or harassment.

Providing a meeting place for the students is the law of the land under the 1984 Equal Access Act, and the Supreme Court has said that schools allowing extracurricular activities must not pick and choose which groups get access to facilities.

Allowing the group to meet free of persecution is also the right thing to do. Public schools are important to the nation’s efforts to come to terms with its diversity. They should be setting a standard for young people and for the society at large by encouraging tolerance and understanding on campus. They must not succumb to the pressure tactics of well-intentioned but misguided zealots.

When demonstrations against the gay support group broke out at the school this fall, the administration properly cracked down on students who were distributing flyers in an effort to force the support group off the premises. But then opponents of the group turned up the heat; more than 200 people showed up at a meeting last month to debate the issue. Principal Gary Ernst has lamented the polarization of the school and community that the issue has brought on.

The Huntington Beach Union High School District’s board of trustees is clearly feeling the heat. The district’s equal access policy, which allows the group and other non-curricular organizations to use school facilities during non-instructional time if they abide by certain conditions, is sound. When the board takes up the issue later this month, it should affirm the policy.