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> Thomas McLaughlin
Arkansas
Eighth Grader Teaches His School a Lesson in Courage and Constitutional Law
When a classmate
asked 14-year-old Thomas McLaughlin if he had a crush on a
particular girl who rode the same bus to Jacksonville Junior High,
Thomas answered "No."
"Well,
I know why you don't," the classmate baited Thomas. "It's because you're
gay." "Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not," Thomas responded. That was the genesis
of the highly publicized two year long court battle that pitted Thomas's First
Amendment rights against Pulaski County Special School District outside of
Little Rock, Arkansas.
Thomas's science
teacher overheard the exchange between the boys and informed
the assistant principal - not that Thomas was being harassed, but that Thomas
himself was at fault for discussing his sexual orientation at school.
Thomas's day at
school went sharply downhill from there. The principal called
Thomas into his office and asked whether or not his parents knew he was gay.
They didn't, Thomas confessed. The principal demanded that the 14-year-old
tell his parents about his sexual orientation and gave Thomas until 3:40pm -
the end of the school day - to decide if he was going to make the phone call
to his mother or if the principal would do it for him. In the end, the school
counselor called his mom at work and outed the eighth grader without his
permission.
Administrators
and teachers at Jacksonville Junior High began preaching to
Thomas about the sin of homosexuality. The principal made him read passages
from the Bible. His choir teacher even told Thomas that if he kept talking
openly about being gay, he would end up like Matthew Shepard, a gay college
student who was beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming.
Refusing to take
the school's harassment lying down, Thomas and his mother
contacted the Arkansas American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). When the district
refused to meet their demands to resolve the conflict, the McLaughlin's and the
ACLU took the school district to court.
The ACLU sued citing
Thomas's First Amendment right to freedom of speech to be
openly gay at school as well as a privacy rights argument, asserting that youth
should have the ultimate decision on how, when, and to whom they come out. The
legal team also asserted that school officials violated the separation of church
and state by preaching to Thomas and by forcing him to read the Bible as punishment.
When the press
got wind of his case, the national media spotlight turned on
Thomas. The eighth grader certainly wasn't a practiced activist at the time,
but he proved to be strong and resilient, granting many interviews in the hopes
that telling his story would prevent this type of discrimination from happening
to other students. Letters of support poured in from LGBT youth and adults
across the country. Thomas credits his parents' support and the encouragement
from these letters for giving him the resolve to see the case through.
In July 2003,
Thomas won his case against the school district. He was awarded
$25,000 in damages and received an apology from school officials who were ordered
by the court to clear Thomas's disciplinary record of citations related to the ordeal.
"All I want
out of this is for me and other gay students to be able to go to
school without being preached to and without being expected to lie about who we
are," says Thomas, who lives in Monroe, Louisiana, and is about to begin the
tenth grade at his new school where he is considering starting a Gay-Straight
Alliance Club.
This year, the
ACLU of Arkansas will also be honoring Thomas's work toward
civil rights with the prestigious "Civil Libertarian of the Year" award.
"Schools
everywhere need to learn from Thomas's case," explains Rita Sklar,
Executive Director of ACLU of Arkansas. "They aren't above the Constitution,
and they can't get away with silencing gay students and violating their rights."
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