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Originally Posted by FatFreeGoodness
Not at all. If a male and female were repeatedly told to cool their PDAs at the school, even after being penalized (suspended) several times because of it, and still continued, I think they would get the same treatment. No foul here.
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First of all, my post was not about the penalties for the infraction being the same- it was about whether or not penalties are even being handed out the same. My whole point was that, while the penalties obviously exist, I am in extreme doubt that any such penalties are being put on the "straight" couples- as in, straight couples are not being punished for doing the same thing. It was the center of my entire post.
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However, I will go further: You don't have to treat everyone the same, because they are not the same. If a female dashed across the gym topless, this would be grounds for suspension. If a male did it, it would not. If a male wore lipstick and makeup to school it appropriate to demand that this be stopped, while I assume many females do just that. This is not because he does not have the right to be different, it’s because he does not have the right to be distracting while at school.
In a similar way to individuals being treated differently, couples may be treated differently if their behavior has different effects. I suspect that there is a rule against any PDA of any kind at the school. However, high school being what it is, that rule is difficult to enforce completely so they only go after obvious or disruptive incidents. These students got "dinged" for both.
Once the students got dinged once for being disruptive together, they had more attention paid to them. They chose to repeatedly defy the rules and got into hot water repeatedly.
Assuming the article has the facts correct and there are no important omissions, I think the school did the correct thing.
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Why is it a distraction, or any
more of a distraction if one part of the student body does it already? It's not like if someone strapped a dildo to their forehead... so the decision rests on whether or not sexual orientation carries into the "distraction" factor, and whether or not sexual orientation is a protected right of minors in a public school. Regardless, like I said, the only thing that realyl matters here is whether or not the "straight" couples' infractions are being penalized equally.
You say that the couple was "dinged" for being obvious and disruptive. I say it's only
more "obvious" than a straight couple if you're a bigot towards gays, and only
more "disruptive" if you believe that all the kids attending the school are also bigots- it should only
matter that you are more visually enthralled by it if you're a bigot. In other words, if you weren't against it, it wouldn't matter that it sticks out a little more for YOU.
If i'm out somewhere, gay couples don't visually jump out at me like they're in a spotlight or glowing, and their "PDA"s don't strike me any differently than a straight couple's would. I can't imagine any argument that gay/lesbian PDA's are more distracting that isn't just someone