If you are going to permit students to express themselves about sexuality in schools, can you punish a kid for "coming out" as being the wrong one?

Oakridge High School in Muskegon, Michigan, is one of many schools across the U.S. that took part in Wednesday's "National Day of Silence" -- an event promoted heavily by homosexual activist groups, which view it as a day to protest alleged discrimination faced by students who identify as "gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT)." At Oakridge High, duct tape was passed out for students to wear over their lips as a way to show solidarity with homosexual students who are purportedly suffering in silence.

John Gardner is pastor of Holton Family Life Worship Center in Holton, a community of approximately 2,500 about 17 miles northeast of Muskegon. Pastor Gardner says his 15-year-old son David, a student at Oakridge High, was suspended for a day by the school because he wrote with a black marker "I'm straight" on a piece of duct tape and attached it to his shirt. He explains that David donned the message to voice his objection to the school's participation in the Day of Silence.

"They asked him, at that point, to take it off," Gardner says, "and David [asked] why do the rest of the kids in the class get to wear theirs and I can't wear something about what I believe?" According to the pastor, the teacher then instructed David to remove the message or he would be "kicked out" of class. "And he said, 'Well then, you'll have to kick me out' -- and that's what they did," says David's father.

There is absolutely no way that any school official could possibly argue that the sticker in question created a material disruption or the threat of one. There was no denigration of anyone -- merely the assertion of the student's sexual orientation as a heterosexual. Given that the school was sponsoring speech about sexuality that day, there can be no denying that the school had opened up itself up as a forum for the topic -- and I somehow doubt that a kid who had written "I'm Gay" on the duct tape and worn it would have bee silenced and suspended.

Don't these people know about Tinker v. Des Moines?

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