Oh, God!

When a high school senior told her principal that students were taunting her for being a lesbian, he told her homosexuality is wrong, outed her to her parents and ordered her to stay away from children. Yes, of course that happened in Florida.

He suspended some of her friends who expressed their outrage by wearing gay pride T-shirts and buttons at Ponce de Leon High School, according to court records. And he asked dozens of students whether they were gay or associated with gay students. Well played, sir! The American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the district on behalf of a girl who protested against Principal David Davis, and a federal judge reprimanded Davis for conducting a "witch hunt" against gays. Davis was demoted, and school employees must now go through sensitivity training. Yet despite all that, many in the conservative Panhandle community still wonder what, exactly, Davis did wrong. Really? You're not sure?

"We are a small, rural district in the Bible Belt with strong Christian beliefs and feel like homosexuality is wrong," said Steve Griffin, Holmes County's school superintendent, who keeps a Bible on his desk and framed Scriptures on his office walls. No shit! I guess you all ought to enforce your own beliefs into the public school system then, seeing as how you feel so strongly about it.

For those of you with common sense enough to say away, Holmes County, on the Georgia line, has about 20,000 residents. There is some agriculture, but most people are employed either by prisons (what a surprise) or schools; some commute to the Gulf Coast to work in tourism. And Ponce de Leon, with fewer than 500 residents, has a cafe, a post office and an antique store. And that's about it, if you don't count the backwards thinking.

Many in the community support Davis and feel outsiders are forcing their beliefs on them. Griffin, who kicked Davis out of the principal's office but allowed him to continue teaching at the school, said high schoolers here aren't exposed to the same things as kids in Atlanta or Chicago. "I don't think we are that different from a lot of districts, at least in the Panhandle, that have beliefs that maybe are different from societal changes," Griffin said. Yes, break free from those societal restraints. Equal rights? Pshaw!

The judge summed it up well: "I emphasize that Davis's personal and religious views about homosexuality are not issues in this case. Indeed, Davis's opinions and views are consistent with the beliefs of many in Holmes County, in Florida, and in the country - where Davis went wrong was when he endeavored to silence the opinions of his dissenters." I guess they forgot that little word "public" in front of school.