California must’ve misinterpreted that:

Public Government schools can prohibit students from displaying messages that attack gays or other persecuted minorities, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday in the case of a Southern California youth whose T-shirt proclaimed that “homosexuality is shameful.”

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a high school sophomore in San Diego County was unlikely to be able to show at trial that his rights were violated when school officials ordered him to remove the shirt in April 2004, the day after an event at the school promoting gay-straight tolerance.

“Public Government school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion or sexual orientation have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the majority opinion.

First of all, the student in question is clearly a moron. His religion saying that homosexuality is “shameful” is irrelevant, since not everyone follows the same religion, or even if they do they don’t follow his specific interpretation of it. The statement itself is ridiculous, as is his assumption that a government school — let alone one in Southern California — would allow it.

That said, I actually agree with the dissenting judge on this:

Judge Alex Kozinski dissented, saying the majority was relying on pop psychology to create a new right for certain groups of students to be protected from offensive speech.

“I have considerable difficult with giving school authorities the power to decide that only one side of a controversial topic may be discussed in the school environment because the opposing point of view is too extreme or demeaning,” Kozinski said.

As any freedom-loving person knows, the best weapon against bone-headed and hateful speech is even more speech. It was gay-straight tolerance day, here’s someone who disagrees, why not start up an arguement? It’d expose the circular reasoning of the student in question & actually strengthen the point that was being made by the event. Instead, they add fuel to the whole “christian persecution” garbage & set a double standard.

I strongly doubt that some jackass with a religious T-shirt is really so painful for gay students to endure. Hell, I’ve known gay dudes that could seriously stomp the shit outta somebody if confronted, if this guy crossed the line he’d find out pretty quick.

On a more personal note: I remember when I was in high school there were students like this, kids apparently put in government schools as “youth missionaries” in hopes of finding converts. They tended to be the most annoying people in the entire school, even some of the teachers would engage in counter-hassling of the God Squad. One day I needled one of ‘em so bad he actually broke out of Charlie Church mode & cussed me out. To this day I still consider that an accomplishment…

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