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Ethics

: Dispatches from the Culture Wars

7th Circuit Upholds Anti-Gay T-Shirt

By Ed Brayton

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In a ruling I've been waiting for, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a student's right to wear a mildly anti-gay t-shirt in response to the Day of Silence protest (see full ruling here). This is absolutely the right result, though I wish the ruling was more broad in its support of free speech. In this case, a student wore a t-shirt to class that said "Be happy, not gay" on the back and the school forced him to black out "not gay." The court agreed that this was a violation of his free speech rights, and they are right.

One of the interesting things about the case is that the plaintiff agreed that the school could reasonably ban more pointed and negative messages on a t-shirt. They agreed that if he had worn a t-shirt that said "homosexuals go to Hell" then the school would be within its legitimate authority to prohibit such a message, but that it was not within such authority to ban the much milder "be happy, not gay" message.

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Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on April 28, 2008 (boomark / email).