A judge ruled that a Florida principal violated his students’ free-speech rights by squelching pro-homosexual messages. He blasted the educator for misunderstanding the First Amendment, but who is truly ignorant of it?

If there ever was an example of inmates running an asylum, it’s the modern government-school system. Thanks to numerous court rulings, students can now buck authority with the freedom to wear clothing and espouse political and social messages that their school – perhaps reflecting the wider community’s standards – deems objectionable.

An example of this has just played out in Ponce de Leon, Florida, as a lesbian student named Heather Gillman and the ACLU have just won a $325,000 judgment against the Holmes County School Board in a free-speech lawsuit. At issue were the actions of former Ponce de Leon High School principal David Davis, who led a “relentless crusade” against homosexuality, according to U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak. Reports the NewsHerald.com:

. . . after an investigation into the ‘secret society’ of gay pride at school, Davis suspended several students for supporting the girl [Gillman].
. . . Davis banned rainbows, pink triangles and a number of what he called sexually suggestive slogans. The slogans included ‘I Support Gays’ and ‘God Loves Me Just the Way I Am.’
But Smoak noted that Davis did not ban several magazines in the school’s library – Cosmogirl, Woman’s Day and others – that contained articles about sex and dating. He also did not punish a boy for making explicit sexual advances toward a girl . . . .
‘. . . Where Davis went wrong was when he endeavored to silence the opinions of his dissenters,’ he [Smoak] said.

I can’t think of anything more laughable than describing students as “dissenters.” Governments have dissenters; politicians have dissenters; political parties and organizations have dissenters; but schools’ charges are children, individuals over whom they have dominion while class is in session. And it’s not that I’m a fan of the government-school system. However, I understand that if such a system is to exist, teachers and administrators must have the authority necessary to maintain order. This is why it was long understood that when children are placed under the care of others, those individuals act in loco parentis, meaning, in place of a parent. (If some find this unacceptable, they should homeschool — I heartily recommend this, by the way.) Thus, I would no more call children who object to their principal’s rules “dissenters” than I would those who object to their parents’ rules. I would label them something else: disobedient and rebellious.

The problem with arguing for any kind of student expression based upon the First Amendment is that we don’t ascribe to children an adult set of rights. Minors may not vote, join the military, drive, buy alcohol or cigarettes, or enter into contracts, for instance. Likewise, students don’t really have free-speech rights in school (see Bethel School District v. Fraser, for instance). If I want to pepper a schoolteacher with profanity and tell him off, that is my right. But if I were 30 years younger and in his class, a trip to the principal’s office would be in the offing.

If the judiciary isn’t actually granting students first-amendment rights, what is it doing? Well, our judges-cum-social engineers have said that students do have a right to certain kinds of expression. Logically rendered, this simply means that students should be allowed to say some things but not others. But this is just stating the obvious, as every school in every corner of the Earth has applied this standard. The question is, who will draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech?

Just as it is the parents in the home, it should be those who act in loco parentis in the schools. This accords with a principle long embraced in American governance, subsidiarity, which states that the smallest possible unit of society that can handle a given task should be the one to do so. School speech codes should be established by school boards, principals, and administrators, not by some lawyers in black robes. What the judiciary is doing is nothing less than usurping the authority of localities. It isn’t making speech in school “free” but is simply placing different limitations on it, those drawn up by individuals who have the clout to misinterpret the Constitution to serve their own ends. As to this, if Ponce de Leon High School had chosen to promote homosexuality under the guise of tolerance training and squelch criticism of it – as many schools have done – the story wouldn’t have made the news and the courts and ACLU wouldn’t have shown much interest in “free speech.”

Of course, some may not like the values inherent in Principal Davis’ actions. My response to them is that they don’t have to live in places such as Ponce de Leon, Fla. Values are much like politicians, in that no set of them ever pleases all of the people all of the time. But one of the beauties of local control of education is that the values in schools will more likely match those of the community. When the courts intrude into these matters, however, this is seldom the case.

Such federal intervention also limits diversity. Local control results in municipalities with varying value models in place in their public institutions, offering people the opportunity to find a locality that suits them. In contrast, centralized control slaps a certain values straightjacket on every town, making it subject to the same social engineering from coast to coast.

Places like Ponce de Leon don’t have San-Francisco values, and Judge Smoak knows it. He said himself that, “Indeed, Davis’ opinions and views are consistent with the beliefs of many in Holmes County.”

And if this black robe had an understanding of and respect for the Constitution, he’d know that insofar as this goes, their beliefs are all that matter.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.