"That's so gay."
You hear that phrase everywhere. Teenagers, especially, use it. A lot.
Should using that phrase be punishable by school officials as harassment?
Officials at a Santa Rosa, California, high school are going to find out. The parents of a student who used the phrase and was punished are suing the school.
When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, "Do you have 10 moms?" she shot back: "That's so gay."
Those three words landed the high school freshman in the principal's office and resulted in a lawsuit that raises this question: When do playground insults used every day all over America cross the line into hate speech that must be stamped out?
After Rice got a warning and a notation in her file, her parents sued, claiming officials at Maria Carillo High in Santa Rosa, Calif., violated their daughter's First Amendment rights when they disciplined her for uttering a phrase "which enjoys widespread currency in youth culture," according to court documents.
Testifying last week about the 2002 incident, Rice, now 18, said that when she uttered those words, she was not referring to anyone's sexual orientation. She said the phrase meant: "That's so stupid, that's so silly, that's so dumb."
But school officials say they took a strict stand against the putdown after two boys were paid to beat up a gay student the year before.
"The district has a statutory duty to protect gay students from harassment," the district's lawyers argued in a legal brief. "In furtherance of this goal, prohibition of the phrase 'That's so gay' ... was a reasonable regulation."
While I'm all for free speech, I also don't think the school's actions were unreasonable. The purpose of school is to teach children what is acceptable and not acceptable in society. If this student had used a racial or ethnic slur, I doubt the parents would be so quick to sue.
The parents do have an argument that the school did nothing about the other students taunting their daughter for being Mormon. But the way to combat that bigotry is not by supporting their own daughter's thoughtless speech. It seems to me this is a situation where all the students can learn that words (actions) have consequences...sometimes unpleasant ones.
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