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Summarized by Kent Larsen
SLC Teen Gets Notice For Supporting Gay-Straight Club
(Fear of a gay school)
Time pg52 21Feb00 P2
By Harriet Barovick
As gay-straight alliances proliferate, so do virulent protests and legal battles against their existence.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH -- Time Magazine reviewed the prolifieration of
gay-straight clubs at high school's nationwide, including in Salt
Lake City, where the majority LDS population finds their existence
troubling. Yet when one Salt Lake City high school banned such a
club, LDS Church member Keysha Barnes, 18, objected, and signed-on as
a plaintiff against the school board.
Barnes, the daughter of a local Church leader, is heterosexual. She
simply found banning the club to be offensive, and Time implies that
she views banning the club as homophobia. However, the group
including Barnes lost the lawsuit, but she says that her family and
friends now take gay rights more seriously because of her stand.
Time says that many of these clubs meet more for social reasons than
for sexual reasons, and focuses a little on the situation in Salt
Lake City. The clubs say that they have a right to meet in schools
under the federal Equal Access Act, a law passed, somewhat
ironically, to allow religious clubs to meet at public schools after
school. When a Utah judge ruled against the club in the Barnes case,
it was because the school had taken the draconian step of banning all
clubs rather than let the gay-straight club meet.
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