Rick,
I'll ask you to stipulate that there probably have been incidents of
student-on-student harassment (verbal insults, perhaps physical threats
and actual violence) directed at the gay students. This is certainly a
common phenomenon at other schools, and so let's assume that this is
what the school board is responding to. If we're then essentially
balancing the equities, it doesn't seem to me a close call. This does
not appear to be merely about dueling identity politics, though I
recognize it is in the teachers' interest to make it seem so.
First, we don't know that the gay students even asked for the posters.
All we know is that the school board -- which, of course, has the right
to make these policy judgments -- has apparently decided to address an
actual, tangible problem (harassment, perhaps violence -- again, I'm
making a highly plausible assumption), and determined that a campaign
of this sort would be helpful in providing a safer and more effective
environment for the education of students
On the other side of the scale, we have no reason to believe that the
teachers who object to this campaign have suffered comparable insults,
harassment, or violence during the school day. Their "equity" in this
situation is their desire to express their subjective dislike or
religious disapproval of gay people. Moreover, while juveniles will
behave like juveniles, the teachers are adult professionals who are
supposed to be concerned with the ability of all their students to
learn in a safe and effective environment. No one is requiring them to
swear allegiance to a religious creed, march in a parade, or even teach
Rubyfruit Jungle. So attempting to characterize this as something
being "shoved down their throat" is quite an exaggeration, I'd suggest.
If someone provided evidence that the teachers were suffering
harassment that was qualitatively comparable to that being suffered by
the gay kids, I'd support an appropriate tolerance campaign for the
teachers. But being forced to accept their employer's decision to post
a message aimed at improving the environment for students whose
educational wellbeing the teachers are supposed to be concerned about
anyway is not, to me, qualitatively similar to having your books dumped
in the trash and being called a dirty name.
Steve Sanders
Quoting Rick Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Steve: I agree with your point about whiny victims and the culture of
complaint. But here is the problem. One group of whiny complainers
asks for a Pink Triangle to make them feel more welcome. This causes
another group of whiny complainers to complain about having the Pink
Triangles shoved down their throats. Which group of whiny complainers
should be appeased? What would be the more neutral way of resolving
this dispute between the dueling whiners?
Rick Duncan
Steve Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Quoting Rick Duncan :
What if a teacher walks into class, sees the display, and states
that he does not agree with its posting in his classroom. May the
school discipline him for merely making it clear that the display is
the message of the school board as opposed to that of the teacher
himself?
It be interesting to speculate, too, whether gay students would then
have some sort of disparate-impact and/or harassment claim (against the
teachers individually? the school board?) under the state or local
non-discrimination ordinances (there is no federal gay rights law, of
course).
I also think there is a non-constitutional religious liberty policy
issue when teachers are required to teach under a banner that
violates their sincerely held religious beliefs?
Rick, the problem with this, is seems to me (and like yours, this isn't
a legal argument, but a practical one), is that the vast majority of
religious believers (of all types) probably encounter, in their daily
work lives, any number of policies, things they are expected to do,
colleagues they are expected to put up with, etc., that they could
claim violate some sincerely held religious belief of theirs, if they
insisted on being strict and literal about it. But most people do what
they need to do to get by each day, if for no other reason than they've
absorbed the American ethos of live-and-let-live pluralism.
Not long ago, civic-republican oriented conservatives wrote books with
titles like "The Culture of Complaint," about how too many Americans
had become whiny, oversensitive rights-claimers to the exclusion of
larger notions of duty and citizenship. I confess, the idea of
teachers taking offense and asserting "rights" against policies that
are intended to help their own students learn in safer and more
effective environments strikes me as being just as regrettable.
Steve Sanders
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Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad
or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed,
or numbered." --The Prisoner
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_________________________________
Steve Sanders
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
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