By By Nicol Jenkins
Boca Raton News

Students who are gay will now have access to log onto supportive websites in Palm Beach County schools.

Nine months after a student publication first disclosed that the School District of Palm Beach County had filtered out access to gay supportive web sites from the School District's computers, those filters have been removed.

"Sites are blocked to protect students. There is an appeal process; and if the site is found to be not harmful, it can be unblocked. That's what happened in this case, “ said School District spokesman Nat Harrington.

Area gay rights groups have applauded the district’s action.

"This is great news for teachers and students in our public schools," said Rand Hoch, President and Founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, a non-profit organization whose site was one of those which has been blocked by the School District. The Council has been working to advance equality for Palm Beach County's gay and lesbian community since 1988.

"Allowing access to up-to-date information provided by the Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and other supportive organizations will assist administrators, faculty and students in making our public schools a more accepting environment for all students," Hoch added. "The County's five GSAs will benefit as well."

GSAs (Gay Straight Alliances) are student organizations, which give gay students and their allies a safe and supportive place to meet.

Last March, an Inlet Grove High School senior published an investigative report disclosing that while Palm Beach County's teachers and students were denied access to gay-supportive web sites on the District's computer system, they could access the anti-gay web sites of the Traditional Values Coalition, the American Family Association, and Focus on the Family from any School District computer. Inletspin.com editor-in-chief Joe Dellosa, reported that the web sites of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (www.glsen.org ), Gay-Straight Alliance Network (www.gsanetwork.org) and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (www.pflag.org) were among those being blocked by the School District.

When this was brought to the attention of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, the Council enlisted the support of both Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Florida, Hoch said. For several months, Lambda Legal senior staff attorney Greg Nevins and ACLU of Florida Legal Director Randall Marshall had been working with the district to find a solution to this problem. As a result, the district is considering switching to the filtering software currently used by the School District of Miami-Dade County.

"That software appears to be much better, not lumping gay sites into a "alternative lifestyles/ fetishes" category that school officials would want to block, " Nevins said.

When Hoch met with district attorney Bruce Harris, he learned that the GLSEN web site was still being blocked.

"I had referred your request relating to this website to administrators. The site was reviewed by them and a determination was made that the site be blocked due to profanity found on it,” Harris stated.

Shortly after, Harris informed the Council that the district had removed the filter blocking the GLSEN web site, according to Hoch.

"We applaud the efforts of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council and thank the Palm Beach County School District for recognizing that GLSEN 's website is an important resource for enriching school climate and helping create safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation," said GLSEN Deputy Executive Director Eliza Byard.

"Unfortunately, Internet filters remain very blunt instruments: important and well-intentioned efforts to ensure that young people are not exposed to inappropriate information can also lead to blocking access to important internet resources," Byard added. "We are pleased that students and educators in Palm Beach County will now have access to GLSEN resources through its website."
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by Tally on Daily Kos

Fri Dec 22, 2006 at 01:08:46 PM PST

• Tally's diary :: ::
• 
  

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Reality Is a Blessed Event

By Ruth Marcus
Washington Post

My only regret about Mary Cheney's pregnancy is that it didn't happen earlier -- say, during the 2004 presidential race, when Cheney was working for her father's campaign and his running mate was busy trying to write discrimination against people like her into the Constitution.

Imagine a hugely pregnant Mary Cheney sitting in the vice president's box at the convention. Imagine Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, cuddling their newborn onstage at the victory celebration.

How perfectly that would have illustrated the clanging disconnect between the Republican Party's outmoded intolerance and the benign reality of gay families today.

Better late than never. Cheney's no crusader; she has little interest in becoming the poster mom for gay parenthood. But whether she intends it or not, her pregnancy will, I think, turn out to be a watershed in public understanding and acceptance of the phenomenon. This is the Ellen DeGeneres moment of national politics.

Acceptance won't come immediately, of course, and certainly not from all quarters. The folks who have fits about "Heather Has Two Mommies" are beside themselves over "Heather Is One of Two Mommies." Especially because the other mommy is -- as Mary Cheney is inevitably described -- The Vice President's Openly Gay Daughter.

"Unconscionable," said Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America. "Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation," Crouse wrote on the TownHall.com blog. "Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers."

"I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father," pronounced Robert Knight of the Media Research Center. The couple, he said is seeking to "create a culture that is based on sexual anarchy instead of marriage and family values."

I can understand that people -- especially those who have no personal experience with gay families -- are uncomfortable with the notion of children without a parent of each gender. What I can't understand is using words such as "unconscionable" or "tragic" to describe the choice of two people who love each other and want to create a family together.

To be a badly wanted child (one thing that's indisputable about the children of same-sex couples: the parents had to work to make it happen) in a home with two loving parents is no tragedy. If they're worried about "emotional devastation," the Crouses and Knights of the world would do better to reserve their lamentations for children in poverty, those who are abused or neglected, or for children in families splintered by divorce.

As to sexual anarchy, Mary Cheney and Heather Poe represent its antithesis. This is a couple who've been together for 15 years. In her mind, as Cheney told "Primetime Live" this year, "Heather and I already are married. We have built a home and a life together. I hope I get to spend the rest of my life with her. The way I look at it is, we're just waiting for state and federal law to catch up with us."

That could take some time, especially if Mary Cheney's political party has anything to do with it. As a resident of Virginia, which does not permit a gay parent to adopt, Poe will have no legal connection to the child that she and Cheney clearly intend to have and raise together. If the couple were to split up, Poe would have no legal right to see the child.

Virginia's newly adopted and expansively drafted constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage casts doubt on the ability of Cheney and Poe to write binding medical directives and wills. Without any legal protection, state or federal, against job discrimination -- the Bush administration opposes extending anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation -- Mary Cheney could be fired simply because she is gay.

In fact, perhaps because it's less susceptible to being hijacked by the extremes, the business world is outpacing the political sphere in recognizing and responding to the new, out-of-the-closet reality of gay Americans. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies offered health benefits for domestic partners this year, up from just 28 a decade earlier, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

The latest issue of Fortune describes how companies seeking to attract and retain gay workers are offering bereavement leave if a same-sex partner dies, adoption assistance or paid leave for gay employees who have children, and relocation help for gay partners when employees are transferred. "Put another way, gay marriage -- an idea that has been banned by all but one of 27 states that have voted on it -- has become a fact of life inside many big companies," the magazine said.

Perhaps Cheney's high-profile pregnancy will help the Republican Party come to grips with those facts of life. If not, though, she's going to have to explain to her child what mommy was doing trying to help a party that doesn't believe in fairness for families like theirs.

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — Mary Cheney, a daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is expecting a baby with her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, Mr. Cheney’s office said Wednesday.

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, said the vice president and his wife, Lynne Cheney, were “looking forward with eager anticipation” to the baby’s birth, which is expected this spring and will bring to six the number of grandchildren the Cheneys have.

Mr. Cheney’s office would not provide details about how Mary Cheney became pregnant or by whom, and Ms. Cheney did not respond to messages left at her office and with her book publisher, Simon & Schuster.

The announcement of the pregnancy, which was first reported Wednesday by The Washington Post, and Ms. Cheney’s future status as a same-sex parent, prompted new debate over the administration’s opposition to gay marriage.

Family Pride, a gay rights group, noted that Ms. Cheney’s home state, Virginia, does not recognize same-sex civil unions or marriages.

“The news of Mary Cheney’s pregnancy exemplifies, once again, how the best interests of children are denied when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens are treated unfairly and accorded different and unequal rights and responsibilities than other parents,” said the group’s executive director, Jennifer Chrisler.

Focus on the Family, a Christian group that has provided crucial political support to President Bush, released a statement that criticized child rearing by same-sex couples.

“Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, the group’s director of issues analysis. “Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the best for the child.”

In 2004, Ms. Cheney worked on the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, which won in part because of the so-called values voters who were drawn to the polls by ballot measures seeking to ban same-sex marriage.

Mr. Bush voiced strong approval that year for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, as he did this year, too. While gay rights groups called on Ms. Cheney to speak out against the proposed ban in 2004, she remained silent.

But Ms. Cheney wrote in a book published this year that she had considered resigning from the campaign after learning that Mr. Bush would endorse the proposed amendment. She said that she decided to stay because other important issues were at stake in the 2004 campaign.

As she promoted her book last spring, she said a federal ban on same-sex marriage would “write discrimination into the Constitution.” The vice president has hinted at disapproval of the proposed amendment. Asked where he stood on the issue during a campaign stop in Iowa in 2004, Mr. Cheney said, “Freedom means freedom for everyone.”

Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, said that Mr. Cheney had recently told the president about the pregnancy and that “the president said he was happy for him.” The Cheneys have five grandchildren by their other daughter, Elizabeth.

Mary Cheney, 37, is a vice president at AOL; Ms. Poe, a former park ranger, is 45.

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The Okeechobee High senior takes her case to court despite insults and fierce foes.

Maya Bell
Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer

OKEECHOBEE -- She has been called an abomination to God, a sinner who's going to hell, an attention-seeker bent on disrupting the tranquillity of this rural cattle town on the north shore of Florida's largest lake.

Yet Yasmin Gonzalez, a 17-year-old senior at Okeechobee High School, has no intention of backing down.

"There are two ways you can look at this: me being courageous or me being stupid," Gonzalez said, sitting in a park near the school. "But I don't want underclassmen to go through what I did. No one should have to."

Two weeks ago, Gonzalez became the first Florida student to sue her principal and School Board for the right to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance, a school-based club that would promote tolerance and understanding of gay people.

She has gotten very little of either since. Instead, she exposed deep conflicts over homosexuality in this Bible Belt town of 5,500.

On one side is the American Civil Liberties Union and students such as Heather Zipperer, a 17-year-old senior who doesn't understand why the proposed club has generated such an uproar.

"I think they're embarrassing themselves by taking it this far. It shouldn't be such a big deal," Zipperer said. "Those kids can't help who they are. And it's wrong to tell them they're wrong."

Foes speak out

On the other side are the School Board, the local ministerial association and residents such as Terri Rubio who support Superintendent Patricia Cooper for nixing the club. She did so even under threat of a lawsuit and despite a federal law that has paved the way for more than 3,200 alliances to spring up in schools across the nation.

"The ACLU needs to go back to Washington, where people are more tolerant, and leave our nice little churchgoing town alone," said Rubio, 33, an insurance clerk whose children attend Okeechobee High.

Okeechobee administrators would not comment. But Mathew Staver, president of the Longwood-based Liberty Counsel, which advised the School Board on its options, said they share Rubio's overriding fear.

"The concern is that it would teach not just tolerance and acceptance but promote homosexuality and sexual activity," Staver said.

A former teacher, Kevin Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, has heard that argument plenty of times since starting the first Gay-Straight Alliance in Massachusetts in 1988. He said it still rings hollow.

The clubs exist, he said, to make schools a place where all children can feel safe, allowing them to focus on learning rather than on their fears of harassment and bullying.

"So that tells me there is something other than the best interest of the students at play in Okeechobee, and I'll call it what it is," Jennings said. "It's politics and bigotry."

Many of the 115 school clubs across Florida, which include 20 in Central Florida, began under similar controversy. Conservative Christians have campaigned against them in Charlotte and Pinellas counties, and last year more than 1,000 parents signed a petition calling for a ban in Hillsborough. The School Board there is now considering requiring parental approval for joining any after-school club.

But for the most part, the clubs have been allowed to exist and even flourish -- because the law is on their side.

"When we started last year, there were grumblings from some teachers who didn't think it belonged in school, and some parents complained," recalled Nancy Kendall, an English teacher and sponsor of Apopka High's alliance. "But today we have 35 members and a float in the homecoming parade."

Ironically, Congress opened the door to the clubs in 1984 by passing the Equal Access Act, which allowed student-prayer groups and Bible classes to meet in public schools during noninstructional hours. But it did so by requiring schools that permit any student-initiated noncurricular activity, such as a chess club or a service club, to allow all extracurricular activities.

In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law, prompting court after court to rule it applies to the Gay-Straight Alliances, too.

"The bottom line is Okeechobee administrators had a moral and legal obligation to obey the law and stop sending the signal that their gay and lesbian students are second-class citizens," said ACLU attorney Robert Rosenwald.

He said Okeechobee High has listed several noncurriculum-related clubs on its Web site, including a Crime Watch and a Key Club.

Depends on definition

But the Liberty Counsel's Staver, who has not been retained to fight the lawsuit, said the board and administration have concluded that every club on campus is related to the curriculum. As such, he said, the litigation likely will center on "how to define curriculum-related versus noncurriculum-related" clubs.

Gonzalez and Amber Sewell, 17, one of the straight members in the alliance, said they regularly hear announcements for the school's crochet club on the public-address system. But what they never hear, they said, are admonitions from teachers who overhear or see students making derogatory comments about gay students.

"I got in trouble in summer school for writing 'Amber loves Jose,' but they say they can't do anything about someone writing . . . 'Gays should die' on the bulletin board," Sewell said. "Come on. That's why we need this club."

Gonzalez said she asked Principal Toni Wiersma for permission to start the alliance soon after school started in September. A month later, the lawsuit alleges, Wiersma turned down her request, first saying the school had too many noncurricular clubs and then saying the school did not allow any noncurricular clubs.

Contacted ACLU

By that time, Gonzalez already had been in touch with the ACLU. She had contacted the organization last year when the school refused to allow her to take a girlfriend to the prom. This year, she was permitted to take a girl to the homecoming dance but, she said, she was fed up with threats, friends getting beaten up and insults even from teachers.

So, on Nov. 15, she sued in federal court. Since then, some of the 60 students who expressed interest in the club have backed down -- pushed, Gonzalez's mother, Frankie Michelle Gonzalez, said, by parents who are afraid their child's participation will undermine their businesses. Afraid of losing her job, the club adviser has skipped two meetings held off campus, Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez says, she, too, has thought of giving up, but then she reminds herself of the underclassmen at Okeechobee's only high school.

"This club isn't going to benefit me because this is my senior year, and I know they'll drag this out as long as they can," she said. "But, honestly, I think it will be worth it -- one day."
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