Yasmin Gonzalez (left) and Amber Sewell (right), students at Okeechobee High
Photo courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel.

Good news for everyone, gay, straight, sexually active or not - A recent Florida federal court decision in an ACLU case ruled in favor of students who wanted to start a gay-straight alliance club at Okeechobee High School.

The judge decided that the federal Equal Access Act, which guarantees the right of students in public schools to form clubs had been violated and that the school’s excuse that they blocked the club due to the “abstinence only: funding they receive was no good.

The court also went on take make some great points about sex-education programs:

In the ruling, the court recognized what those of us who advocate for comprehensive sex education have known for years: In addition to being a colossal failure for heterosexual teens, federally-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs by definition exclude LGBT teens. Recipients of this money ($1.5 billion to date and counting) must teach that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity and that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society. Now take the federal definition of marriage that applies to these programs that marriage is limited to a man and a woman and combine it with the fact that same-sex couples cannot marry in all but two states, and voila: the result is that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs discriminate against LGBT students. [ACLU]

That is all pretty exciting and even more exciting when you consider that the judge in this case was considered conservative!

takepart to learn about The Ali Forney Center, a place that offers housing for homeless LGBT teens.

Also - just for fun, the French trailer for Fassbinder’s Querelle is below.

Read on:

• Judge rules in favor of school’s gay-staight alliance
• Judge rules on gay-straight club in Okeechobee
• ACLU claims victory in Okeechobee gay club lawsuit