Reply #125: I'm actually pretty proud of my daughter and her friends [View All]

Although we told her (and the superintendent and vice-principal) that we would take the matter to court if the school dared suspend the kids for the T-shirt brigade they planned in support of their friend, the kids figured out how to get their point across without crossing the line in the sand drawn by the vice-principal.

My daughter's friend wore a T-shirt that said "I love my boyfriend girlfriend." After she was sent to in-school-suspension for a day for wearing it, her friends initially decided to wear identical T-shirts in support of her. They were told (via a general announcement) that because such sayings advertised sexual activity they would be suspended if they did. Pointing out that, if that was the case, the wedding band the vice-principal wore and the picture of his wife and family also advertised sexual activity didn't make a dent - nor did pointing out that given Ohio's (then) recent marriage discrimination amendment made the issue a political one (even if by some stretch of the imagination it wasn't one before).

The kids, entirely on their own, decided to make their point by wearing safety-yellow shirts (that really bright impossible to miss color) that declared "Freedom of Expression." The friend wore her original T-shirt the same day underneath a second shirt and flashed people all day long without getting caught. They made their point. Their friend was well supported. There was nothing the vice-principal could do since even though the T-shirts they were wearing were clearly directed at pointing out their disagreement with his action, even he could no longer argue with a straight face that they were advertising sexual activity.

What is even sweeter is that my daughter's friend felt free to wear the T-shirt in the first place, and about 20% of her class was outraged enough about the vice-principal's condemnation that they would have been willing to wear the same T-shirt in support of their friend - in a very conservative public school in Ohio. I hope that our daughter openly claiming two moms (by her choice since sometime in middle school) had something to do with that.