UPDATE 2/23: After Wichita High School East administrators released a statement Wednesday, the organizations decided to cancel a planned press conference regarding “hate speech” in the student newspaper. Jackie Carter, pastor of First Metropolitan Community Church, one of the groups involved in the press conference, confirmed the cancellation. She said all groups involved “wanted to give the school adequate and appropriate time to follow through on those responses.”
The school maintains the rights of student journalists to publish the editorial in its statement, as well as reiterating its commitment to “a safe and nurturing environment for all students.” It also said, “East High Principal Ken Thiessen met with members of his school’s student organization representing students with alternative lifestyles, explained the circumstances leading to publication of this student opinion, and invited students with a different viewpoint to respond with their own opinion piece.”
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KANSAS — AWichita High School East newspaper editorial that cites anti-gay passages fromthe book of Leviticus has activists demanding a retraction from schooladministrators who have been supportive of the students’ freedom of speech.
The Center for Human Rights announced plans to hold a jointpress conference at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Alfred E. Morris AdministrativeCenter in Wichita, with other LGBT groups to address “hate speech” in a Messenger editorial published Feb. 11.
Colin Johnson’s editorial — “Homosexual teens alienated bycurrent societal trends” —has caused a flurry of controversy for the newspaperstaff. In it, Johnson wrote that older generations have “anti-gay sentiment,”which makes it difficult for young people to accept same-sex relationships.
“These relationships just are not normal,” he wrote.“One thing to notice is that there is legislation against homosexual marriage.However, there are no legislative restrictions to same sex dating. Dating doesoften lead to marriage, so same sex dating should be frowned upon.”
Johnson continues by quoting verses from the Bible’sbook of Leviticus, including one that Johnson interprets as calling for thedeath penalty for gay couples.
He concludes that same-sex dating in high school is a“social disruption, and should be kept out of school to ensure our educationalmission with as little of a distraction as possible.”
James Pryor, CEO of The Center for Human Rights, said thegoal of the press conference is that the newspaper article be retracted. Hesaid the groups want to make the administration aware of sensitive issues, aswell as find out how federal funding will be used by the school to addressbullying.
“We would like to find out what the school district is goingto be doing to address the issue of harassment and bullying, and particularlyhate speech,” he said.
Pryor said the organization agrees “100 percent on freedomof speech,” but the article is causing a “hostile environment for LGBT teensand also the student [writer].”
Newspaper adviser Susan Martin said school administratorshave been supportive of the student’s freedom of speech.
“The administration has been incredible,” she said. “[Theadministration] has taken the viewpoint that the students do have the right tofreedom of expression, whether we like it or not. The editors did write aresponse yesterday and it was posted on our website.”
In their response, the editors cite the Kansas StudentPublications Act, which gives public high school student journalists protectionagainst administrative censorship.
“Material shall not be suppressed solely because it involves political orcontroversial subject matter,” according to the act.
Pryor said U.S. Supreme Court rulings on student publications trump theKansas act.
“They cite some statutes in there and if they read thestatute all the way through they would know that there are some things that canbe prohibited,” he said. “The Supreme Court also says that high schools havenot only the right but the responsibility to censor language if it causes anyharm to any students.”
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press LawCenter, said states can always give people more rights than the constitution —or the Supreme Court — allow.
“The people calling on the school district to startcensoring the newspaper need to be very careful about getting what they askfor,” he said. “For every article that is against gay rights, there will be 10censored where students are exposing anti-gay bullying or asking foracceptance. Once you open the censorship bottle, you can’t put the cork backinto it.”
Newspaper co-editor Jessica Thomas said the school board hasbeen supportive of the newspaper staff as well. She said administrators havecalled every day check on them.
“Originally, when it first was published, we did havetrouble at school with people coming up to the newsroom,” she said, “but afterthat it seemed to die down a lot in the school, but it has picked up more onour website and on other websites.”
Co-editor Salman Husain said the goal of the paper’s websiteis to give people a chance to respond to the editorial. He said it has beenfrustrating as some people turned against them.
Martin said some alumni are furious and don’t think theeditorial should have been published.
“Some people asked for apologies,” she said. “I asked myreporter if he wanted to apologize, his answer was ‘no.’ The editors didapologize in their response for one thing, and that was that they had notedited the article well enough for quality.”
Co-editor Lauren Graber said the editors think they couldhave worked with Johnson to better edit the article.
“We all agree that he definitely had the right to publishthe article and we believe that he definitely should be able to publish hisopinions,” she said. “We probably just would have changed how we went aboutpublishing those views.”
Husain said he doesn’t think that Johnson was promoting orencouraging violence against gay individuals. He said the Messenger has published pro-LGBT articles in the past and thenewspaper has an ethical and journalistic obligation to show all viewpoints.
“We are responding to it more in the next issue of thepaper,” Thomas said. “So far, it’s been kind of trying for all of us, but it’sgood that we can see how well we work together through things like this and howsupportive our adviser and administrators are.”