Teachers Hear Some Insults More Clearly Than Others

There's a story in today's paper about another strange case in California. This time, classmates were teasing high school freshman Rebekah Rice about being a Mormon and in the course of the conversation asked "Do you have ten moms?" to which she responded "That's so gay," and got sent to the principal's office for saying it. Ms. Rice got a warning and a notation in her file, whereupon her parents sued the Santa Rosa school district on the grounds that their daughter's First Amendment rights had been violated. It seems to have taken several years for the suit to wend its way through the courts, because Rice is now eighteen, but the trial is going on now. The school district argues that it has a statutory duty to protect gay students from harassment, and that the school had adopted stringent but appropriate standards after two boys were paid to beat up a gay student the year before. Ms. Rice's parents argue that the phrase "that's so gay" is in such common use it was inappropriate to discipline their daughter for using it.

The story raises lots of issues, including the overly-litigious nature of our society, why our court system allows such a silly lawsuit to take up judicial resources for years, and why some parents can't stand for their children to be criticized in any way no matter how slightly. It seems to me that the school responded properly by noticing and discouraging the use of derogatory language referring to gays, and the mild punishment administered seems proportionate to the offense.

Here's what I don't understand: why in the world was it okay for her classmates to tease Rebekah Rice about her religion? If her teacher heard the offensive phrase"that's so gay" he or she must also have heard the conversation that led up to it, which is just as offensive as the speech they punished. Would it be okay for the classmates to tease someone for being Jewish or Moslem? It's surprising that the school's sensitivity is so much more pronounced with respect to one form of discrimination than another.