Ruling in lawsuit over anti-gay shirt appealed

Attorneys for a local student who sued his school district after being suspended for wearing an anti-gay shirt to school said Monday that they are asking a federal appeals court to overturn a lower-court ruling this month that allows the Poway Unified School District to bar students from wearing on their clothing any statements that the district deems offensive.

The attorneys want the federal 9th Circuit of Appeals to impose an injunction that a lower court denied.

The student, Tyler Chase Harper, is asking the appeals court to make the school district stop doing what his attorneys said was a selective ban on religious freedom.

The civil suit, filed in June, alleges that officials at Poway High School violated the teenager's free-speech rights in April when they suspended him for writing anti-gay statements and biblical references on masking tape and placing the tape on his shirt.

The boy's attorneys filed their notice of appeal less than a week after they amended their original complaint to include the boy's younger sister in the suit. Kelsie K. Harper, 14, is now a freshman at the high school.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/11/23/news/top_stories/19_52_3311_22_04.txt

If not, then why should the kids have a right to wear anti-gay shirts?

Free speech for everybody or nobody, which is it?

Works for Alliance Defense Fund who funds all sorts of anti gay and Anti Abortion and other Christian right-wing legal cases all over the country... here's a link to their site with photo's of the T-shirt http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/story/?id=437

They basically fund all the legal challenges to gay marriage and civil unions everywhere. Any time you hear of a gay marriage ban or any case involving anti gay rights, they're involved.
People For the American Way has a page on ADF.


"Right Wing Organizations
Alliance Defense Fund
15333 N. Pima Road, Suite 165
Scottsdale AZ 85260
Phone: 1-800-TELL-ADF
www.alliancedefensefund.org
ADF’s Founders:
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ
Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts
Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family
Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries
Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media
Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association
(And 25+ other ministries)
President and General Counsel: Alan Sears
Date of founding: 1994
Finances: $15,411,093 (2001 budget)"

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=4457

It seems like a bit of a stretch for them to attempt to wrap themselves in a "religious freedom" blanket. Even if I did think that under those circumstances it would be permissible (which I definitely don't), the guy's shirt didn't have anything religious on it.

That's pretty smart in an evil-genious kind of way, really. Invest yourself in a religion (or, at least a different 'literal' perversion of said religion) that's bread and butter is making sure other kinds of thought don't exist. Then, when someone complains about your narrow-mindedness, accuse them of being narrowminded.

It's a fact of life. The ruling will NOT be overturned on any legal grounds.

n/t

write messages on tape and stick it to him?