Here is a letter I wrote to the editor of my local paper, the Potomac News. It was published last Sunday.
I was disturbed to find that the House passed HB 1727, which would take away the freedom of students in public schools across the state by forcing them to obtain parental permission before attending any activity.
I am a student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. We have a program that includes a period of the day for extracurricular activities. There are many extracurricular activities available, and all students are free to try any activities they wish to try. This adds to the educational experience of the school.
HB 1727 would reduce the number of new activities students explore at Thomas Jefferson. The responsibility of gaining parental permission would be both a major annoyance, making it impossible to attend a club without advance thought, and an attack on our freedom of assembly.
Besides these problems, the bill is clearly a quiet attempt to harm clubs with goals the writers of this bill do not agree with. I am offended by this kind of politics.
More below the fold.
This bill was obviously designed to get rid of organizations in schools which promote the tolerance of homosexuality. The Virginia legislature has tried to do this before, by explicitly banning these clubs, but did not succeed. So now the bigoted republicans in the state legislature are trying to accomplish the same thing -- except this time their motives are hidden a little better.
I am unhappy that I was not able to explicitly mention the true motives of this bill in the actual letter, but it would have greatly reduced the chances of this letter being published. Unfortunately, in a rural county with a conservative newspaper, you can only indirectly imply something like support of homosexuality-tolerance organizations if you want your letter to appear.