Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

The article is here. The summation is this, with apologies to my mother, whose hair will most certainly be falling out: Public school student, a girl, wears a t-shirt to school that says, “All the cool girls are lesbians.” School administrator asks student to refrain from wearing shirt in future, ACLU shows up and honks at the school, and predictable hilarity ensues. (If you read the link, be sure to click through to the Lynn, Massachusetts newspaper and see all the comments from the townspeople. )

The usual hilarity usually involves a kid wearing a t-shirt with an obscene gerund emblazoned on it, and the discussion is usually fairly cut-and-dried: There is nothing wry or ironic about an obscene gerund, it’s obviously worn in an effort to inflame, but the ACLU gets involved anyway. Comments from the peanut gallery usually fall into two camps: the ‘don’t make me have to read obscene gerunds’ group, and the ‘it’s just a word, kwitcherbellyachin’ group.

But this time? It’s a little twistier. We have now added the ‘ohmigod someone’s hating on heterosexuals now’ group, along with the ‘it’s okay to allow a little gay pride’ group. We should also note that the standard ‘what did you expect, the ACLU’s the devil’ cheering section is in place, countered nicely by the ‘whaddaya talking about, the ACLU protects you, too’ cadre.

I have some random thoughts on this:

• I don’t think the original kid with the t-shirt is gay; I think she thought it was ironic and cool and witty. The t-shirt is actually kind of funny, IMO. (If she really is gay, it doesn’t matter to me one bit. Party on.)
• Which renders the whole ‘gay pride vs. hating on heterosexuals’ discussion silly, at least in this instance.
• While I would never, and I mean, NEVER allow a child of mine to wear a t-shirt like that to school, and I’d never buy a t-shirt like that for them, it wouldn’t put me in a twist if a classmate of theirs was wearing one.
• That being said, I tend to favor the schools that don’t permit the wearing of same.
• I like it that the ACLU will debate anything in the vein of personal expression.
• Speaking from the vantage point of a cradle Catholic, I don’t think the ACLU is out to squash religion. I believe they have actually gone after the rights of kids to wear crucifixes and other religious expressions.
• Speaking from the vantage point of a cradle Catholic who spent twelve years in the gulag Catholic school system, I have no patience with anyone whining about their right to wear a t-shirt to school, seeing as how this is how I spent the better part of twelve years:

You see this young lady? That could easily have been me, many years ago, all the way down to the saddle shoes. This young lady is doing something called studying, a process made easier because there is no one standing nearby hollering over their perceived right to wear a t-shirt touting anything at all, much less the perceived rating on the Cool-o-Meter of the lesbians. She is not distracted by the ACLU arguing with her principal over anyone’s perceived rights, nor is she laboring under the delusion that she will enjoy a full complement of rights (and their attendant responsibilities) until she’s eighteen.  (She’s actually trying hard to impress the guy sitting behind her in Latin class, but that’s for a different day.) If nothing else, and I say this with full confidence, this young lady is so busy hating those knee socks and the beanie that is surely lurking in her locker that she is having trouble drumming up any sympathy for the kid who wants to wear a bangin’ lesbian t-shirt.

In fact, any mention of a lesbian would have killed any one of the many penguins Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns who taught me lo, those many years ago. Right before she drew her last breath with her rosary though, Sister would have sent me to the office to face what would have been the first of a long line of earthly retributions for saying such a thing.

And then my parents would have promptly stroked out at the thought of the havoc I was wreaking at school, but not before grounding me for all eternity the minute I got home.

Somewhere in there I think there’s something good. I’m sure the fine citizens of Lynn, Massachusetts will find it soon.

© E. Stocking Evans 2012