WCBD 2 News reports that Brianna Popour, a gay student at Chesnee High School in South Carolina, has been suspended after refusing to remove her “Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian” T-shirt.
Popour claims she wore it to encourage other students to come to terms with their sexuality, but was told to either change her outfit or go home.
When she pointed out that there was nothing in the school’s dress code that suggested there was anything wrong with the shirt, she was told by an administrator that “not everything is in the handbook” and that the the shirt was “disruptive.” Then she was suspended.
Brianna’s mother Barbara Popour says the move was discriminatory and is fighting back against the school.
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“Isn’t that what school is supposed to teach you?” Brianna asked. “To be happy with who you are? Maybe people will be more comfortable showing who they are, because you should be able to wear what you want to wear.”
Ellen Kahn, director of the Children, Youth and Family Program at Human Rights Campaign Foundation, is strongly against the school’s decision and thinks it could be damaging to other gay students.
“It’s quite an extreme measure,” she told Dailymail.com. “I think the majority of school administrators and national organizations would tend to agree that it’s an extreme punitive reaction.”
