Teen Spirit

Can a private Christian school expel students who are suspected to be gays or lesbians?

Over in the US, a case wending its way through a California court is being watched, by media and activists alike, very closely. See, Principal Gregory Bork had his suspicions about two students at the California Lutheran High. These were 16-year old girls, still in their junior year high, who apparently had a super close friendship.

Suspicious about this friendship, what Bork allegedly did was, he made them stay in windowless rooms, refused to let them call their parents, and interrogated them, until one girl finally admitted that she "loved" the other girl. Voila, the next thing they knew, they get the boot from the school.

According to Principal Bork, now much maligned by blogs and other members of the Internet community, the girls didn't embody the Christian code of conduct that the school espoused. So, they had to take their love elsewhere.

Fortunately, the girls didn't just meekly accept their punishment. Instead, they went to court. Aside from alleging that the school had invaded their privacy, the girls also alleged discrimination and false imprisonment. Interestingly, their lawyers had to argue that by charging tuition fees, the school had turned itself into a business. Once it was a business, it had to conform to laws prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Of course, the school tried to have the case dismissed. However, in a preliminary decision rendered just last month, the court allowed the suit to proceed. The girls are now free to conduct what lawyers call 'discovery proceedings', where they fish for as much information as possible (including, hopefully, whether Principal Bork was against lesbians because he had a very bad homosexual experience that left him heartbroken).

With this development, maybe the school will choose to settle, which is what I'd probably do too. After all, the school has no concrete evidence that the girls are lesbians. Just because a girl expresses her love for a member of her sex doesn't mean she's already a dyke, right?

This question actually leads to a very familiar conundrum - exactly what is a lesbian? Is it a girl who just "loves" another girl, or do you need to have actual sexual contact with another girl before that qualifies the person as a lesbian? Usually, people say what's important is self-identification - it's what a person thinks of herself, not what she actually does, that's important.

Here though, I doubt if it will help win the school's case. Given that Principal Bork didn't have hard evidence of lesbian conduct, all he had to work on when he made the decision to expel was a confession of love - which is pretty flimsy, if you ask me. Love don't mean shit when it comes to knowing what's gay and what's not.

Here's another reason why I think the school should settle. Just last December, at the same time that this case was filed, another case was decided in the same state of California. The judge there ruled that another high school could not "out" a student from her closet. In this case, the principal in Santiago High School had informed Charlene Nguon's parents she was acting like a lesbian (because she was engaged in PDA all over the campus). Charlene, a straight-A student, was disciplined and eventually asked to leave the school. Instead, she contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, who represented her in suing the school.

Surprisingly, Charlene won. Now, schools can't even tell parents their suspicions regarding the student's sexual orientation. Otherwise, they get sued.

Just think about the ramifications of this decision. If the school administration can't tell parents what they know about the sexuality of the students, then that means they can't use that knowledge (at least, for those still closeted) to expel the student. If they do, then that means they'd be writing the parents, saying "we regret to inform you that we have decided to expel your daughter because she is a lesbian." So, the act of expulsion would necessarily mean revealing the sexuality of the student, which, according to this case, has just been prohibited.

Too funny.