Florida School District Bans Sex-Based Clubs

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Florida School District Bans Sex-Based Clubs

Special Report - October 23, 2007
One school district in Florida has solved its problem of whether to allow clubs promoting homosexuality to meet at its schools by adopting a policy banning all sex-based school clubs. In November of 2006 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), on behalf of student Yasmin Gonzalez, who started a Gay Straight Alliance in her school last year, sued the Okeechobee County School System for banning the club. The ACLU’s lawsuit claimed the Gay Straight Alliance club should be allowed to meet in Okeechobee schools. A judge ruled that the Gay Straight Alliance will be allowed to meet in the schools while the lawsuit is pending, since the suit will not be heard until March, 2008.

On October 9th, the school system amended its policy concerning student clubs and organizations, by adding the following provision:

“To assure that student clubs and organizations do not interfere with the School Board's abstinence only sex education policy and the School Board's obligation to promote the well-being of all students, no club or organization which is sex-based or based upon any sexual grouping, orientation, or activity of any kind shall be permitted.”

While the lawsuit will determine the fate of this particular Gay Straight Alliance, all future clubs will be governed by the new Board policy.

“This is one creative solution to the growing number of student clubs in American high schools that are purposed on the homosexual, bisexual, or transgender agenda,” North Carolina Family Policy Council attorney, Tami Fitzgerald, said. “It is obvious to most parents that clubs based on homosexuality are contrary to the goal of keeping students abstinent. In North Carolina, our state law mandates that sex ed in public schools is abstinence-based, so schools need to protect themselves from student clubs that counteract the abstinence until marriage curricula requirement.”