Ohio Highschool punishes LGBT supporters over T-shirts

GayRVA Staff
November 2, 2012

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It started as a reddit post and has since been picked up by national outlets.

In Mercer county, Ohio, two female students wore homemade shirts for Celina High School’s “twin day”. Their shirts said “Lesbian 1” and “Lesbian 2.” According to the reddit poster, the students were asked to remove their shirts because of the pro-gay message.

It didn’t take long for outraged students to show their support for the spurned classmates. The following Tuesday, as many as 20 students made shirts with the simple message “I Support *rainbow* – Express yourself.” However the schools administration deemed the message “too political.”

Too political is a convenient answer for a school that has a “Students For Life” club that routinely wears shirts with fetuses on them, and students wearing pro-Romney shirts, and shirts declaring President Obama is a socialist.

The Ohio ACLU has stepped in after details spread across the web.They are currently investigating the situation, and still gathering details about what actually occurred. Drew Dennis, Litigation coordinator for the Ohio ACLU, said that, as the facts sit now, this is a case of the administration inappropriately censoring their students. “It falls in the category of free speech. Students have the constitutional right to passively express their opinions, even if that expression contains an unpopular viewpoint.”

The OHACLU sent a letter to Celina High schools administration.

The school sits in Mercer county, a conservative bastion in Northwest Ohio that went over 70% for McCain/Palin in 08. This isn’t the only LGBT issue Ohio public schools have run into in the last year. In May, Waynesville, Ohio student Maverick Couch was granted $20,000 in a suit against his administration in northwest Cincinnati. Couch wore a shirt with a rainbow “jesus fish” and the words “Jesus wasn’t a homophobe” on it. His school’s administration stepped in and tried to ban him from wearing the shirt, but the OH ACLU stepped in to assure his right to free speech were upheld.

Updates to this story will follow as they come in.

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