This case of the Ohio student may become a legal battle that goes to the US Supreme Court in the current environment. I recall a case somewhat similar to this in CA nearly twenty years back. In that case, a student in a Poway, CA school wore t-shirt which literally called out homosexuality as an abomination, after the school had just dealt with anti-homosexual students' violence against LGBT students. The student wore the t-shirt as part of an informal, almost satiric version of Gay Pride day. The student in that case received in-office detention on the day he wore the t-shirt, with no suspension and nothing placed in his record. The student nonetheless sued for violation of his free speech rights. At the time, I thought that case presented a much closer call, as I thought about my own disputes with high school administrators about "offensive" t-shirts, though I also clearly understood what was at stake for the LGBT students in Poway, CA at the dawn of the 21st Century. The way the case resolved, in the practical sense, was the federal court of appeals (Ninth Circuit) found the school had discretion to ban t-shirts that demeaned other students, and it was a decision with which I agreed.
Here, the student was directly confronting organized official speech on Gay Pride day. While she may find herself wanting to analogize her position to dissenting students standing up to an official proclamation supporting the Vietnam War (Tinker merely dealt with wearing a black armband meant to protest the war, which is sorta innocuous when we think about it), we have to balance this with the fact that the laws, as presently articulated, mean to provide a safe space for young LGBT students, who normally have to traverse a closed, intolerant home, and where sometimes the closed environment in a school may be something out of a Shirley Jackson short story nightmare, as happened in Poway, where gay students were being harassed and even beaten.
I normally want to give all kids space, but this is one of the rare situations where pluralism and secularism should be enforced. The Ohio student's objection is her belief LGBT students are somehow defective, and she demands tolerance for not wanting to tolerate others. Assuming no other facts than as presented, the legal position, based upon the laws already passed against anti-LGBT discrimination, should be Gay Pride day should not become a day of controversy in the closed environment of a school. It is not like Columbus Day in a State, such as New Mexico, where there are living, existing Native Americans, and likely time for a different approach generally. One may also say, Do we still need Gay Pride day? My take is, the school should have discretion to say there should be. I don't get the school is located in a place where LGBT rights are as front and center as, say, San Francisco, CA.
My only other comment is how so many organized institutions promoting Christianity have become obsessed with a subject Jesus had no specific opinion about, when Jesus easily could have had one, had Jesus chose to do so. The closest one gets in the Christian Bible is from St. Paul, in Romans 1:21 writing snidely about men having lust for men, for what I had thought was in the context of Sodom and Gommorah. Still, it is not Jesus talking. I also hear particular anti-LGBT Christians quote the Hebrew Bible's resident scold, Leviticus. Most civilized Jews have moved well beyond various parts of Leviticus (obviously not the incest and beastiality), and those sections of the Torah which call for stoning adulterers and stoning those who do not rest on the Sabbath day. One wonders, however, if the Ohio student had ever posted Bible verses of Jesus talking smack against the rich, of which Jesus had decidedly direct opinions, or if the student thought about posting the Beatitudes, if she wanted to remember the LGBT students are her fellow human beings.
My concern, in this current judicial environment, this may become a "test" case. I can almost see Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito salivating, and Roberts becoming nervous, thinking to himself again, "How did I get stuck with these guys?"
Sigh.
