Gay/Straight Club Debate Roils District

About 300 Orange Unified School District parents and students argued late into the night Tuesday at a heated public forum on the proposed formation of a gay/straight club at El Modena High School.

The standing-room-only crowd appeared equally divided over the controversial club, which would be the first of its kind in the district.

“There needs to be a safe haven for all students,” said Maryina Herde, a teacher at the high school who has volunteered to be the club’s advisor. “This has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with respectful treatment for all students--it is their constitutional right, and it’s my constitutional right.”

Others, however, took the opposite view, arguing strongly against creation of an organization that they said could be used to impose a particular point of view on the minds of their children.

“I say let me and my wife take our children aside and be with them and counsel them,” said Jack McNiff, a parent who said he has four sons attending schools in the district. “This does not belong in the school system.”

While reviewing proposed campus clubs is generally a routine process for trustees, they said they decided to hold the public forum on this one to get feedback from the community on the controversial proposal by the Gay-Straight Alliance.

“This isn’t like saying yes or no to any other club,” board president Terri Sargeant said early in the meeting at McPherson Middle School in Orange. “It’s an emotional and divisive subject.”

Board members were notified of a student’s intent to form the club on Oct. 1, a day before Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill protecting gay high school and college students from harassment by classmates.

According to the proposed organization’s mission statement, the new club’s goal would be to “raise public awareness and promote tolerance by providing a safe forum for discussion of issues related to sexual orientation and homophobia.”

The club would encourage all members to join in discussions and other social activities that would “counterattack unfair treatment and prejudice,” the mission statement said.

Last week the People for the American Way Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties group, charged that the school board was violating federal law by impeding efforts to organize the club. Kendra Huard, acting director of the foundation’s California office, said the federal Equal Access Act prohibits public school districts from discriminating against secondary school, noncurricular clubs on the basis of political, philosophical or religious viewpoints.

“This law was written so that every club and organization on a public school campus has an equal right to meet,” Huard said. By holding the unusual public forum, she said, the school board “negatively affects these students because by merely asking for the club, they think they have done something wrong, which they haven’t at all.”

Huard said the foundation could take legal action against the school district if the board--expected to vote on the matter at an unspecified future meeting--does not allow the club to meet.

“We just really want the board to understand that if they violate the law, they are opening themselves to litigation,” she said.