Gay Straight Alliance

OCALA, Fla. -- Just one day after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against a Florida school district for denying students from forming a gay-straight alliance, the school board ended months of delays and said it will allow the club. [ Read more → ]

OCALA, Fla. — The American Civil Liberties Union said it is suing one Florida school district for denying students to form a gay-straight alliance, while another district relents and now says it will allow a similar club at a nearby high school. [ Read more → ]

KATHLEEN, Fla. — The American Civil Liberties Union says it will represent two students who have been unable to obtain permission to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at Kathleen High School in Polk County, Fla.. [ Read more → ]

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. -- In an effort to avoid a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a Pennsylvania school district said it would allow a gay-straight alliance to meet until the school board can reconsider its application at next week's meeting. [ Read more → ]

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. -- The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening legal action against a central Pennsylvania school board that denied students' request to form a club that would bring together gay and straight students. [ Read more → ]

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. -- Despite hearing testimony that LGBT youth were three times more likely to take their own lives as opposed to their straight peers, Chambersburg Pennsylvania School Board Member on Wednesday voted against allowing a gay-straight alliance to be established at a local high school. [ Read more → ]

More than 100 parents, students and local residents packed a Lake County, Fla., school board meeting on Monday to voice their opinion on a possible ban on extracurricular clubs after a student applied to form a gay-straight alliance club. [ Read more → ]

TAVARES, Fla. -- The Lake County School Board is considering eliminating all non-academic clubs from middle and high school campuses instead of allowing a student to form a gay-straight alliance. [ Read more → ]

SAN FRANCISCO -- A report released this week by the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and the California Safe Schools Coalition (CSSC) provides new insight into the impact on individual students and school climate as a whole when different class lessons include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and issues. [ Read more → ]

TORONTO -- A dispute over the use of the term "gay-straight alliance" in Ontario schools has prompted the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto on Monday to accuse Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's administration of making “religious freedom . . . a second-class right.” [ Read more → ]

BRUNSWICK, Maine -- When a high school math teacher hung a t-shirt containing the message, “gay? fine by me” in her classroom, she was expecting it might elicit some reactions, but was surprised when dozens of students said they wanted a t-shirt like it of their own. [ Read more → ]

Scott Lively has found time to go after the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and accuse them of creating Gay-Straight Alliances in schools as part of an effort to seduce lonely kids and recruit them into homosexuality: [ Read more → ]

According to Tennessee lawmaker Joe Ragan, gay “feelings” can be controlled by “mentally healthy adult human beings,” and questioned, “Should society avoid disapproving of pedophilia, prostitution, murder, etc., because practitioners of those behaviors may commit suicide at higher rates?” [ Read more → ]

The move to “make it better,” just got better. One Colorado, a statewide LGBT advocacy group, has launched a new program to facilitate the creation of gay-straight alliances in Colorado schools and secure safe school environments for all students. [ Read more → ]

MADISONVILLE, Tenn. – The Monroe County Board of Education has agreed to allow students to wear T-shirts in support of the formation of a gay-straight alliance (GSA) at the school, according to a statement released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. [ Read more → ]

More than 83,000 people have signed an online petition at Change.org, demanding that authorities launch an investigation into allegations that a Monroe County Tennessee high school principal assaulted a student for wearing a homemade t-shirt in support of another student’s efforts to form a Gay-Straight alliance in the school. [ Read more → ]

MADISONVILLE, Tenn. -- A few weeks ago, we brought you the story of Sequoya High School in Madisonville, Tenn., where senior Nathan Carroll was attempting to start a Gay Straight Alliance. [caption id="attachment_35916" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Maurice Moser"][/caption] After starting a petition in the school for... [ Read more → ]

MADISONVILLE, Tenn. -- Nathan Carroll, a Tennessee high school senior, has been bullied most of his life for being gay. The openly-gay teen attends Sequoyah High School in Madisonville, Tenn., and recently decided a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) is needed at his school. [caption id="attachment_33754"... [ Read more → ]

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan this week warned school administrators nationwide that gay-straight alliance groups must be recognized as having the the same legal rights and protections as other student clubs at public secondary schools. [ Read more → ]

Tennessee lawmaker Stacey Campfield has spent the better part of the last seven years in the Tennessee legislature fighting for the "Don't Say Gay" bill, a law aimed at prohibiting teachers from discussing homosexuality in kindergarten through 8th grade classrooms. [ Read more → ]