High school calls teen's innocent rainbow Big Gay Ice Cream t-shirt 'inappropriate'

Large Happy Dairy Product?

As far as Christians go, I am a horrible one. I call myself a Christian reservist. While I don’t struggle with the concept of a creator, or that Jesus was a wise teacher, I do struggle with the idea of a personal God and that Jesus was the son of God. I guess I want it to be true and there is where faith comes in.

But I try to lead my life so that the best case is I go to heaven, and the worst case is I just die but I tried to treat others the way I would want to be treated. Which is like the #1 golden rule they tell you in Bible school. But some how some Christians, and especially certain sects forget this rule. Whats worse is their attitude turns people off to Christs words to be groovy, which is like the complete opposite of what you should be doing.

Similar to my defense of firearms, it boils down to people’s fear and distrust of the unfamiliar and cognitive bias that something is icky. If you have exposure to these things or sit down and actually reason how and why you feel this way, you will see that these negative feelings are unfounded.

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Yeah, always good to keep the example of that YEC who got a geology PhD in mind: He showed up, adopted the attitude that he was working according to a variety of contrafactual assumptions(ie. the science we call ‘Geology’); and proceeded to do so with sufficient tenacity and competence that he met the requirements for a PhD in the field.

It’s hard to feel warm and fuzzy about his likely intentions in doing so; but ultimately that didn’t matter: he didn’t believe a word of it; but he produced the science, so that was that.

Again, I suspect that there are greater than zero examples of overt misconduct among professors; but I have been largely unimpressed by the ‘Christian Persecuted!!!’ stories that I have bothered to chase down in slightly more detail. Lots of people who don’t seem to grasp the difference between “engage with this set of ideas sufficiently closely to write insightfully about it and discuss it in detail” and “believe this”; some who grew up in the ‘I quoted him, then I quoted the guy who disagreed with him’ vacuum of ‘objective’ journalism; and then freaked out when somebody who does research with policy implications had the temerity to remark that a given politician’s policies were full of shit, according to the best available research. Then you get the just-plain-malsocialized who believe that not being allowed to hold court for 80% of the class time on the subject of your beliefs is ‘censorship’ rather than ‘classroom time management’.

Colleges do tend to produce a few more actually dodgy cases outside the classroom. More or less any time Administration steps in to try to keep the campus’ pro-Israel club and its pro-Palestine club from coming to blows, you end up with a set of speech restrictions that sound like they were written by a corporate HR drone (quite possibly because they were, given the trend in university governance).

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Hello one-shot troll. As others have no doubt vehemently pointed out to you, the most overprotected militant group in the states is, in fact, right wing christian authoritarians. I too, am now pointing this out to you. Vehemently, I might add.

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‘Christain’ is such an apposite typo…

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This user is suspended until March 6, 2289 10:13pm.
Reason: “allow homosexual behaviour to flourish and sexual perversion will inevitably increase.”

I don’t think it’s true, but still, you make this sound like a bad thing! Perhaps it’s a beneficent prognostication of The Squirting Universe.

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It is very, very obvious that it is not being used in the other sense, and you and all the other responders are being deeply disingenuous to even think of claiming that it is. Use a little common sense, here, please.
English is context-sensitive. The context here is totally obvious, and permeates every single piece of their advertising.

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I agree that it depends upon context, but I am not at all clear why you assert that the context here seems very very totally obviously unambiguous. Since there isn’t anything here to indicate sex, might reactionaries not be forcing it to fit the frame of their chosen narrative? The way I see it, the reality and context of this are completely ambiguous. Perhaps you lack the fortitude to handle ambiguity if it might possible hint at something you find objectionable. The only thing which becomes certain is your display of bias. It takes discipline to be resolutely ambivalent when confronted with ambiguity, but it can make you a stronger person.

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Thanks :slight_smile: I’m reasonably new to the US, and didn’t realize that kids were constitutionally protected in schools.

That’s… rather delightful and mindblowing to discover. It’s very radically different to UK and Greek schools, where uniforms and compulsory Christian prayer in the morning is the rule, not the exception, and until recently, so were regular beatings. You’re right that it was defeatist, but the idea that the world could actually have become so radically different as I went through just a few short years and a few thousand miles had honestly NOT OCCURRED TO ME.

But… are you sure? If someone doesn’t join in the morning flag-prayer-pledge, that’s considered OK? They can just not turn up and go to the school library instead? Because I’m sure I heard that it was considered compulsory, and kids get punished if they even turn up and just didn’t say the words.

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It’s unconstitutional to force children to take part in the pledge of allegiance.

Which doesn’t mean that schools don’t try to…

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Not to sound defeatist… But no, free speech is not protected in schools. If you are under 18 many places you cannot:

  • wear a hat
  • say a curse word
  • wear clothes that advertise alcohol or cigarettes
  • have an animated conversation with a teacher
  • confess abuse without consequences
  • insult members of staff in an editorial manner

Etc.

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In schools forcing people to say something is generally illegal. But forcing them to remain quiet is perfectly legal.

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Could be worse:

Requirements relating to collective worship.

(1)Subject to section 71, each pupil in attendance at a community, foundation or voluntary school shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship.

On the plus side, most schools just ignore this stupid rule. Mine certainly did - and got dinged on it in every school inspection, but no-one cares.

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True dat. I guess I just get annoyed about discussions on rights when the discussers are criminally naive. Using frameworks that schools have to punish a T-shirt that says Gay is about as professional as banning the color blue. But both are legal, even if monumentally++ stupid.

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That sounds more like school as I understand it. Part of the point of schools is to teach boundaries and socially appropriate behavior to kids, and it seemed weird that the government would give kids complete carte blanche. Governments tend to want more control instilled into their populace than that.

If that’s the case, then forcing them to remain quiet on issues of sex/sexuality (or indeed a blanket ban on “any potentially incendiary topics”) would maybe be reasonable.

Holy crap - collective worship in schools is the LAW in the UK? I never knew that, I thought it was just my school being crazy extremist idiots, making us sing the lord’s prayer each morning.

It’s not for government to “allow” kids or anybody else to do anything. Their job is to do what their citizens need them to do. They aren’t entitled to have an agenda or autonomy of their own.

If any topics seem incendiary, it’s because society as a whole needs to grow up. Apparently, schools as an instrument of socialization have not fulfilled this purpose.

Understand that I think banning Big Gay Ice Cream is completely ridiculous. Shaming someone because of a mere mention of sexuality–when we have sex Ed course in school–boggles the mind.

But stupid administrators can do stupid things. And we can point and laugh heartily.

I am gonna start wearing t-shirts that spout incendiary subjects. Specifically Sodium Na. :smile:

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The company logo that contains a rainbow and the term “BIG GAY x” would be enough.
But also, it’s founded by a couple of gay guys Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff; they acknowledge that homosexuality is a factor in their company name; their flavors include “Salty Pimp”; they did a cool (literally!) “half of all sales” fundraiser in support of the Ali Forney Center, which is a place to help LGBT homeless kids (their drop-in center got wiped out by hurricane Sandy); and they wrote a book titled “Big Gay Ice Cream: Saucy Stories & Frozen Treats: Going All the Way with Ice Cream” and if you read that and think they genuinely only mean “happy” when they say “gay”, then… well, I got nothing more, you win! :smiley:

But given all these things, it feels reasonable to conclude that homosexuality is absolutely a theme being explored in both their company name and their merchandise.

See, trolls and kids have this tendency to explore the boundaries, and to push the limits of what is permissible.

If the rule they’ve been told is that they can’t take cookies from the cookie jar, next you’ll hear “I wasn’t taking a cookie. I was just opening the cookie jar and looking in.” OK, new rule, don’t even touch the cookie jar. Next you hear: “I wasn’t touching it, I was using a stick. And I didn’t take all the cookies out of the cookie jar, they were already out of the jar after it had tipped over.”

Always pushing the envelope, testing the boundaries. And I feel this is an awesome thing! Boundaries SHOULD be tested! But syntactic letter-of-the-law testing is bullshit: it only points out issues with the phrasing, and gets the rules rephrased and strengthened against us: it doesn’t attack the principle that we aren’t allowed cookies whenever we want.

So when testing rules, I expect kids and trolls to stand behind testing the foundations of the rule, and : in this case, the rule that for some reason is it inappropriate to broach the topic of sex and sexuality in school, outside the ring fenced sex ed class. And this, kudos to him, is what the kid’s doing - he’s not taking the weaselly route, he’s acknowledging that it was inflammatory, but he’s saying that he should have the right to make such an inflammatory statement through his clothing.

And I don’t anymore know whether he should or not. I’m torn and hypocritical on this.

Should students be allowed to wear a burkha to school? To me, hell yeah.
Should a kid be allowed to wear KKK clothing to school? To me, hell no.

Urk. Now that feels hypocritical. Both outfits are expressions of their beliefs that cover their faces for anonymity which is a cause I highly value. Just, one of them is a group I despise. I weasel out of it by saying “the government calls them a hate group”… but what if the government decides to call Islam a hate group? Would my opinions change? No, they wouldn’t, so my justification is weak.

Should kids be allowed to wear something which makes clear their religious, sports, sexual, gang, footwear, or other affiliation? Eh… I don’t know. School uniforms make questions like this so much simpler. I’m glad I’m not in charge of a school, I think I’d do a bad job.

I’m glad he’s out there pushing the limits, but I don’t think he’ll win this one.

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