Gay Students’ Rights Are Clear

Orange Unified School District officials have refused to allow a gay student club to meet at El Modena High School, but there is no choice for them but to comply, sooner rather than later, with the federal Equal Access Act of 1984.

School boards cannot pick and choose among extracurricular groups, whether Bible study clubs, chess clubs or the gay students, provided the groups are not curriculum-related. In allowing student groups like these to have access to facilities, school officials are not endorsing them, a point that should be made with parents who are unhappy about El Modena’s Gay-Straight Alliance Club.

The Orange district has a very conservative school board, similar in outlook to that of the federal law’s original promoters. In the early 1980s, protection under federal law was sought as a remedy for the perception that religious speech was being denied in public schools. Herein lies the irony of a board arguing against the consequences of a law intended to advance its own values. After Washington opened the doors, school boards who welcome Bible groups also must treat other student groups fairly. They may end up with more than they bargained for.

In the face of litigation, the Orange school board already has argued that this issue comes under the banner of sex education. Unless it can demonstrate that it has a course on what it is like to be a gay teenager, which is what the club’s backers say the student organization really would be taking up, it will have a hard time making that case.

Similarly, any effort to dismiss this as the work of outsiders, not local students, is problematic. If the National Honor Society were challenged similarly for its affiliations beyond a campus, school districts could find themselves in the position of Salt Lake City. That city ended up banning all campus clubs several years ago, an unfortunate outcome.

Orange would do better to follow the sensible and cooler path taken by some other high schools in Orange County, whose gay student clubs simply operate without fanfare.