Sometimes you just have wonder how intelligent our public educational system is. You also have to wonder if there is something in the water in Florida that makes its educators especially stupid. (At Right: a book for gay students in high school entitled The Geography Club by Brent Hartinger.)

In Ponce de Leon, Florida, a High School Principal was accused this week by a Federal Judge of conducting a witch hunt for gays in his student body and breaking constitutional laws in the process.

The Principal allowed student to wear pins of the Confederate Flag, but denied gay students from wearing rainbow flag pins. Said the Principal: "Rainbow flags will make other student visualize gay sex." He did not say what students would visualize when seeing a flag of a racist civil war pin.

The story has a happy ending:

• The ACLU helped a gay student win a law suit of $325,000 against the school board.
• The Principal was replaced.
• A Federal Court now allows students to wear gay pins and advertise gay events.

As we have said before, one of the cutting edges of the gay civil rights movement is happening among gay students between 14 and 18 years of age.