Utah ranks 35th in gay-straight clubs

In 2006, legislators debated a bill banning gay-straight alliances, just months after a gay-straight alliance started meeting at Provo High in conservative Utah County. The bill failed.

But earlier this year, a less strident bill became law. Now, teens must get parental permission to join extracurricular clubs such as GSAs, and school leaders can deny clubs to "protect the physical, emotional and moral well-being of students" or those that involve human sexuality. Clubs also cannot form if students can't find a faculty sponsor.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah had feared that would allow schools to violate the Federal Equal Access Act, which prohibits schools from discriminating against clubs based on "political, philosophical or other content of the speech" at student meetings.

But sponsoring Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, said the law upholds parental rights.

"It won't prohibit them from forming a GSA ... it sets a standard for parental involvement," Tilton said. "If the true intent for the clubs is to provide tolerance and safety and all those other things, it would be the parents who would make the decisions as to how that would be done and if their kids need it."

But McNeil says the parental permission issue isn't the problem. Rather, it's lack of understanding of what came out of the much publicized Capitol Hill debates on the bill, which was substituted seven times.

"Often, I have educators calling me to see if it's still legal to have GSAs," McNeil said. "All the controversy, it sent a ... negative message, that maybe there's something wrong with having a GSA — why would there be all this legislation if there's not something wrong with it? Some students may be too uncomfortable to start one."

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