Student fights same-sex dance rule

A straight Big Piney High School student is challenging a school district policy barring lesbian and gay students from bringing same-sex dates to school dances. At the request of school officials, sheriff`s deputies met Amanda Blair at the school`s homecoming dance in September to block her from attending the dance with her date, another young woman. Blair, a senior, has enlisted help from the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU`s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project in seeking to overturn the policy in this remote town of about 400 people in western Wyoming. "I couldn`t believe that our school was so threatened by the idea of two girls going to homecoming together that they had police officers waiting for us," Blair said. "It`s really sad that this is the kind of attitude that lesbian and gay students at my school will face when they want to bring a date to a school dance." In a letter sent Thursday to Sublette County School District No. 9 Superintendent B. Weldon Shelley, the ACLU demanded that the policy be lifted, citing a 1980 federal case in Rhode Island. In the case, Frick v. Lynch, a federal judge ruled that students who want to bring same-sex dates to school dances are not only protected under the First Amendment but that schools must take steps to ensure their safety when they do bring same-sex dates to school dances. Ken Choe, of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, said the district`s policy violates students` constitutional rights to freedom of expression and equal treatment. Blair said she knew ahead of time that bringing a same-sex date was against district policy and did so to help lesbian and gay students who may want to bring dates to school dances in the future. "We`ve had people in our school that have been gay and lesbian," she said. "I think it would be a lot harder if I were a lesbian to do this for myself. I`m helping those who are." While planning for the event, the honors student and vice president of the school athletic club was told by sheriff`s deputies that she would not be allowed to enter. When they showed up and were asked to leave, they did so without protest, according to Lt. Wayne Bardin. He said the deputies at first were not aware of why the two were prohibited from attending. "That`s the first time I`ve ever been around anything like that," he said. "We`ve escorted people away from the school, but usually there`s been another kind of infraction." Blair and her mother afterward asked the school board to change the policy. Kris Blair said they contacted the ACLU for assistance after getting no indication that was going to happen. Plans for a second school dance this year, a Sadie Hawkins event the Student Council planned to hold Friday night, were set aside after school officials said there could be no dances in the district, according to Blair.