Loved unconditionally by her parents, Amy Obermeyer felt comfortable enough with herself to come out joyfully as a lesbian in high school.
Her own blessings made her feel a sense of responsibility toward gay students who stayed closeted in Franklin, Ind., a town of 14,000 about 20 miles south of Indianapolis.
So, during her senior year, Amy decided to start a gay-straight alliance, a club where gay teens would feel safe and their straight allies could help them create a gay-friendly climate at school.
Amy's good deed, however, was thwarted by school officials at Franklin Central High School.
But in a significant ruling in America's heartland as the new school year started this fall, federal district court Judge Larry McKinney backed Amy—and her First Amendment right of free speech. He wisely ordered school officials to let students create a gay-straight alliance and to treat it the same as all 21 other non-academic clubs, including being put in the school yearbook.
"When you first are realizing you're gay, it can be an isolating experience," says Amy, now a freshman at Indiana University. I think that just knowing someone was trying to start the club empowered the closeted gay kids. I'm hoping that, because of the lawsuit, there eventually will be a gay-straight alliance at my old high school and ones sprouting up all around Indiana."
Amy's courageous battle highlights the obstacles some gay teens and their allies have encountered when they've tried to start the type of support groups that now exist in 1,200 schools and in every state except Mississippi and North Dakota. Student groups are critical to changing the hostile climate that has led to heart-breaking statistics: In a 2001 national survey of 904 gay students by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, 83 percent had been called anti-gay names, 69 percent felt unsafe at school and 21 percent had been injured.
Backward school officials who've resisted student efforts to form gay-straight alliances have repeatedly been defeated in court because of a law Congress passed in 1984 to protect at-school Bible clubs.
The Equal Access Act says public secondary schools that allow any non-academic clubs can't pick which ones to recognize based on what the students want to talk about or do. ( Details: lambdalegal.org ) .
By now, school administrators should know that they aren't above the law and that any attempt to block or discriminate against a gay-straight alliance will only lead to sticker shock—from the size of their legal bills for a losing battle. In the most famous such struggle, the Salt Lake City School District spent $250,000 and triggered parental outrage when it temporarily moved to ban all non-academic clubs rather than accept a gay club. Ultimately, the gay club won.
Yet the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Amy, and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund continue to field calls from frustrated students.
In wrongheaded attempts to limit the visibility that the gay-straight alliances are formed to create, some principals tell students that they cannot use the word "gay" in their club's name, must dilute its message and cannot have their club pictured in the yearbook or announce its activities on the public address system and bulletin boards. The ACLU has recently sent letters to schools in Texas, Wisconsin and Kentucky putting officials on notice that kids not only have the law on their side but also free lawyers.
"What we're seeing now is schools giving up on the fact that there will be gay-straight alliances and instead trying to chip away at their visibility," says Lambda lawyer David Buckel, though a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision—Board of Education of Westside Community Schools vs. Mergens— makes clear that will be a losing argument as well.
Some school officials obviously still need to be taught lessons about tolerance and law. And gay-straight alliances are proving to be the perfect teachers.