School clubs would normally be the last thing a state government would pass legislation to regulate. Unless the regulations involve one of the United States’ traditional hot-button issues: homosexuality.
A law will take effect next month in Utah that exerts control over every aspect of school clubs, ranging from kindergarten activities to high school clubs. The law includes guidelines about how clubs are started, what they can discuss, who can join the clubs, and what authority figures must do if clubs are found to violate any of the rules.
According to lawmakers such as Sen. Scott D. McCoy, however, the law’s true intentions are much more specific than simply regulating clubs.
“This is all about gay-straight alliance clubs, and anybody who tells you different is lying,” McCoy, a Democrat, told The New York Times. Not surprisingly, he voted against the law.
The suspicions of McCoy and other opponents of the law were confirmed by Republican Sen. D. Chris Buttars, who told The Times he thought the law was necessary after parents at a high school in Provo, Utah, cried foul over a gay-straight club formed in 2005.
Buttars went on to say he wanted the law to enable school administrators to stop clubs from violating “the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior.”
Aside from the questionable singling out and exclusion of a segment of the population, most interesting is that the law appears to fly in the face of the Federal Equal Access Act of 1984.
Interestingly enough, this act was sponsored some time ago by Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican. One of the main reasons the act came into existence was to ensure religious and Bible study groups didn’t get discriminated against by secular-minded school officials. The irony in all of this is almost laughable.
Moreover, the new law specifically mentions that clubs are not allowed to discuss “human sexuality.” The law defines this as “advocating or engaging in sexual activity outside of legal recognized marriage or forbidden by state law” and “presenting or discussing information relating to the use of contraceptive devices.”
Essentially, when looked at from this perspective, the law is little more than a Trojan horse for conservative religious morals to be imposed upon Utah schools. This is particularly ironic, considering the groups which are proposing this law are the same ones allowed to have a voice on school campuses because of the Equal Access Act.
Beyond ideological concerns, however, the law is simply unfair and discriminatory. Buttars claims he is perfectly fine with gay-straight clubs meeting “just for friendship.” He says his problem is that school districts need to be able to protect “the physical, emotional, psychological (and) moral well-being of students.”
The assumption of this law seems to be that no gay-straight clubs are formed for “friendship” and that this is a case of administrators protecting the well-being of students.
Couldn’t a parent also argue that a religious group on campus interfered with the physical, emotional, psychological and moral well-being of their child?
Discriminating against student clubs for primarily ideological reasons is a slippery slope. To avoid a damaging situation, lawmakers should look upon all clubs in the same light, rather than singling some out for vague, religiously motivated reasons.