Dispute over dress code leaves student teacher without a job

A University of North Texas senior says he lost his student-teaching job at Decatur High School because he wore a bracelet of rainbow colors, a widely known symbol for gay pride.

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Mr. Meneses said he had worn the bracelet regularly since he started teaching in Decatur in August, and he had heard no complaints about it until two weeks ago.

About three weeks ago, Mr. Meneses attended a Decatur High football game wearing a baseball cap that had a rainbow-striped Texas Longhorn logo on it. A few days later, he wore a T-shirt with a unicorn on it to marching band practice but not to school. Unicorns are another symbol of gay pride.

Mr. Meneses said that the day after he wore the T-shirt, Mr. Fulwood called him into his office and told him that the T-shirt he wore was "too gay" and that he shouldn't wear it anymore.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/denton/stories/DN-meneses_05met.ART0.West.Edition2.86235cc.html

Unicorns are "gay"? That's the first I've heard about it. Guess I better turn in my gay card and copy of the gay agenda. :(

But, that's not my community...

Anyway, there's a good place in hell for that fuldman whatever guy, so we can take some consolation there.

Some of the more radical- Jehovas, Pentecosts- tie the Unicorn image to the devil.
I once hung a 30 foot dragon kite with a large unicorn image around my 5 year old son's room and my fundie sister wouldn't even enter our house.
I live in SF Bay area and have recently seen unicorn images associated with some parade activities. New to me, too.

For centuries, the unicorn, which could only be tamed by a virgin, was an emblem of Christ.

Shame on that school. Looks like the students learned another lesson about America.

to get a life. The guy is a student teacher, a college student assigned to teach under the supervision of a district teacher for a relatively short period of time. He was wearing a baseball cap with a multi-colored logo to a football game and a t-shirt with a unicorn on it to a band practice? So what? I'll bet there is no written policy prohibiting either of those items. Don't district and college officials have more important things to worry about?

it would have been fine if a female teacher wore a shirt or hat with a unicorn on it! Hypocrisy, sexism, homophobia...this is an example of all of those things.
It's crap like this that make me want to go off and live in a cave and be a hermit for the rest of my life.

No, I didn't know that unicorns are gay either. And I live in a town with a large gay population.

I don't think the unicorn tee shirt was a legitimate complaint on the part of the principal.

That said, I think the young man was, at least, foolish in constantly wearing the rainbow bracelet and then the rainbow baseball cap to school and school functions. Especially in a strong Southern Baptist Bible Belt area.

In the school district in which I live, students are prohibited from wearing controversial teeshirts. One student had to wear his tee inside out the other day for its logo of Murder, Inc. Paintball. In some schools here, the only teeshirts the students may wear are the school supplied "spirit shirts" or the purchased-through-the-school-six-pillars-of-character teeshirts.

I support equal rights for gays and lesbians. I don't see any reason why they should not have equal rights. But, frankly, I don't understand the need for constant advertisement about one's sexual orientation. I really don't want to know that much about anyone's sexuality. Hetero or homosexual.

It's about a very basic part of one's identity ... just as a wedding ring is a part of a married heterosexual's identity.

If the student teacher isn't allowed to wear anything that's "too gay," then straights should not be allowed to wear wedding rings to school or have pictures of spouses and their kids on their desks. That's only fair since those items "flaunt" heterosexuality.

weddings or committment ceremonies? Or have children? Or have family pictures on their desks?

If straights want to get upset about rainbows and unicorns "promoting the gay lifestyle," maybe they should first look at the many, many ways they symbolize "the heterosexual lifestyle." (Sort of like "If homosexuality is 'the love that dare not speak it's name,' then heterosexuality is the love that never shuts up.) ;)

If limitations are going to be placed on one group, they should be uniformly enforced on all.

if a student comes to school wearing an anti-bush or anti-war T-shirt? Will they be required to turn it inside out? Controversial as those shirts might be to many, wearing them in school is still a Constitutional protected form of speech.

A simple rainbow bracelet is hardly a form of controversial dress and the bracelet itself, especially with an anti-gay marriage amendment coming up for a vote in a few days, could symbolize his support for gay-rights.

I hope he fights this.

teeshirt rules. Mostly, the tees that are prohibited are those that have profanity, obsenities, and/or in some cases the Confederate battle flag.

School are allowed to have uniform policies. We can ban all t shirts.

school uniforms. Of course schools are allowed to require students to wear them. But without it, the school has no legal authority to ban shirts because the administration disagrees with the message.

If the school mandated that all teachers not wear bracelets, then this teacher was wrong. However, singling out one because of it's controversial meaning, as loose as that term used in this case may be, is not Constitutional.

and switched to a triangle patch.

If they don't want any visible signs of a person's private relationships, they'd better be prepared to ban engagement and wedding rings. Teachers shouldn't be allowed to wear those either because they are "too heterosexual".

that's a new one for me too

someone must have left out that page in the agenda

It tends to arrive along with an overinterpretation of the rainbow flag by those religious weirdos that see a gay conspiracy in everything.

Didn't you get the memo?

Unicorns have a top-secret meaning!

:rofl:

Sounds like the jerk I interned for in Mental Health when I was getting my Family Therapist hours. He didn't like women.

The problem was that he could dismiss me WITHOUT CAUSE.

Or are they straight. If they are gay, someone should tell Napoleon Dynamite.