Orange Unified Trustees Deny Gay Club, 7-0

Setting the stage for a legal battle, Orange Unified school trustees Tuesday refused to allow meetings at El Modena High School of a controversial club for gay and straight students.

After hearing heated arguments from parents, students and outside groups before a crowd of more than 300 in a packed meeting room, the trustees voted 7 to 0 against allowing the Gay-Straight Alliance access to school grounds.

In so doing, the trustees dodged a lawsuit threat from a group of parents opposed to what they call the “gay agenda” in public schools. But they still must contend with a pending lawsuit filed by the two 15-year-old organizers of the club--backed by a pair of national civil rights groups--who say that denying access violates federal law.

“I abhor violence and any kind of harassment,” said trustee Kathy Ward, who introduced the motion to deny the club. “I don’t believe in gay-bashing or treating any student as less than human.”

But the group as proposed would have touched on curricular topics such as sexuality, better addressed by instructors and parents than by teens, she said.

Ward said board members would welcome the creation of a less-divisive tolerance club provided that it did not address sex education or sexual behavior.

The club organizers, sophomore Anthony Colin and junior Heather Zetin, vowed to forge ahead with their case, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana. Backed by free legal help from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, People for the American Way Foundation and Southern California law firm Irell & Manella, the teens argue that the 1984 federal Equal Access Act mandates that, if public secondary schools allow any non-curricular clubs to meet on school grounds, all groups must be afforded the same opportunity.

“I’m not afraid to fight,” said Anthony, an openly gay El Modena student, before Tuesday’s meeting. “I believe my voice will speak for the thousands, maybe even millions, of kids who don’t have the courage or the support to do what I’m doing. It’s about time. It’s right. And this will set a precedent that we, as children, have rights.”

Two other high schools in Orange County--Los Alamitos and Fountain Valley--have gay-straight clubs, but the alliance at El Modena would have been the first in the 30,000-student Orange Unified School District.

In the past week, parents opposed to the group papered Orange with fliers declaring: “The gay agenda is attacking our school district. Stop them.”

Outside school district headquarters before Tuesday’s meeting, more than two dozen parents and students opposed to the club gathered to urge trustees to deny permission for it to meet on campus.

Several carried signs reading “Grades, not AIDS.”

“What you see is a county rising up to oppose what they think isn’t in the best interest of their children,” parent Donna Sigalas said in a presentation interrupted by heckling. “The most compassionate thing we can do is discourage them from a homosexual lifestyle.”

‘It’s a Very Delicate Balancing Act’

The lawsuit by club proponents likely will test two different interpretations of the access act, the same law that allows Christian clubs to meet at public schools. The El Modena case is the fourth nationwide against school districts by students seeking to form such clubs.

A lawsuit in Denver ended in a consent decree that allowed the students to meet. In a New Hampshire school district, students were allowed to form a club shortly after they sued the district. Salt Lake City school officials shut down 46 student clubs rather than allow a gay-straight alliance to form; a lawsuit over that decision is pending.

In rejecting the club, trustees relied on an interpretation of the federal act by lawyer James Bowles, who also represents the district in its labor negotiations.

“There are a lot of people who have rights here: the parents, the district and administration, the teachers and the students,” he said. “It’s a very delicate balancing act.”

He said the club could be construed as a curricular group that infringes on the district’s right to control sex education information, possible grounds for barring it.

Group organizer Heather Zetin scoffed at that. “We’re not going to talk about anything relating to sex,” she said. “We won’t talk about birth control or actual sex or any of that. . . . This group is for discussing what it feels like to come out as a teenager and how to deal with peers and parents.”

The club also could be exempt from the law, Bowles contends, because it appears to be connected to outside groups including the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, a group based in New York that promotes respect for gay and lesbian students in schools. About 600 Gay-Straight Alliances have registered with the group. However, the student organizers say they had never heard of the network, Lambda Legal Defense or the People for the American Way when they first proposed the club.

Before Tuesday’s vote, Bowles lamented that the school board “is caught in the middle. It’s going to get sued no matter what it does.”

The El Modena students petitioned in September to have their group meet on campus. Approving student clubs is usually a routine matter, but the Orange Unified board called a public forum on the topic because of its controversial nature.

The alliance was not allowed to hand out literature or recruit members at the school’s club day in October; nonetheless, about 50 students signed a petition expressing interest in joining.

A November public forum on the club drew 300 people, with speakers about evenly divided between alliance opponents and supporters. After consulting with lawyers, the board last month postponed a decision on allowing the club; that prompted the filing of the lawsuit. Meanwhile, the group has met twice off campus, attracting eight to a dozen students.

The atmosphere at Tuesday’s meeting was indicative of how deeply the topic has divided the community, becoming a flash point for gay rights groups, civil libertarians, conservative activists and parents-rights advocates.

Hundreds of people, some wearing buttons and waving placards, filled all the seats, stood along the walls and spilled outside. Only four speakers were permitted on each side, so spectators loudly clapped their approval and occasionally hissed to show their disagreement. After the vote, some students wept.