Snickers Super Bowl Straight Guys Kiss

Lesbian Student Sues School Over Alleged Discrimatory Policy

SANTA ANA - A former student who took pictures of couples hugging at his Garden Grove high school to bolster claims that gay but not straight students were punished for the display of affection testified Tuesday that he had no proof administrators saw but ignored the acts among heterosexuals.
The photos taken by William Vo at Santiago High School were cited as examples of disparate gay-straight treatment during a news conference at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California office in Los Angeles last year to announce Charlene Nguon's lawsuit against the Garden Grove Unified School District and nine school officials.
The suit was filed on Sept. 7, 2005, and centers on events in the 2004- 05 school year.
Nguon, now 18 and attending a community college, alleged she was subjected to discriminatory discipline that ultimately led to expulsion, although she finished out her senior year at Santiago.
Vo, now a student at Cal State Long Beach, was the second witness in a case that will be decided by U.S. District Judge James Selna without a jury.
The suit also alleges that former Santiago principal Ben Wolf violated Nguon's privacy when he told her mother about her sexuality during a meeting in 2004.
Without a jury hearing the case, most of the testimony is contained in previously taken depositions, along with cross-examination by the district's attorney, Dennis Walsh.
Walsh questioned Vo about his appearance on a television show in which he accused the district of picking on Nguon and her girlfriend, and gave "the impression" that he knew all the facts of the case first-hand.
Vo recalled an occasion when Nguon and her girlfriend, Trang Nguyen, were ordered to attend school on a Saturday after the two hugged.
But when asked to describe another incident, Vo said, "Specifics I don't remember. What happened in general I could remember."
Asked about kissing, Vo said, "I've never seen them kissing on campus."
Walsh pointed out that Vo said in his deposition that he saw the couple holding hands, hugging and "kiss(ing) for five seconds or less."
Vo was asked about his photographs, two of which were marked to indicate that heterosexual students were hugging while standing in front of the administration office windows.
"You wanted to show couples making out and hugging in front of the staff?" Walsh asked Vo.
"Along those lines, yes," he replied.
Vo admitted he had no evidence that administrators ever saw the acts, although he did say that at least one was taken just after school when staff should have still been inside the building.
One photo showed an embracing couple almost directly in front of an adult woman on campus, but Vo conceded he did not know her identity, whether she worked at the school or if she had any responsibility for dealing with displays of affection.
Walsh also asked about a series of questions concerning Internet chats Vo had with Nguon, in which they talked about how difficult schoolwork was and how easy it was to procrastinate.
Walsh said the questions go to the issue of damages, to show that Nguon had other stresses in her life other than claims of unequal school discipline.
Vo denied Nguon ever told him that she was angry at Nguyen, that they had broken up or that she had feelings for a boy.
He also said Nguon never told him she was a lesbian, but said he knew that she and Nguyen "had a relationship going on."
"That's their business, not mine," he said. "It's their personal life."
Nguon's attorney, Christine Sun, has said that her client was an A student, but her grades slipped to Cs when discipline against her was stepped up.
Lawsuit damages, she said, could hinge on how much the discipline affected Nguon's grades.
In an earlier ruling, Selna said the district is immune from liability on punitive damages, but he would not bar or dismiss those claims against the individual defendants.
The first trial witness was Carolyn Laub of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, which is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with Nguon's mother, Crystal Chhun.
Laub said her organization consults with other districts in the state on gay discrimination and harassment issues. She testified that the organization did not conduct its own investigation of Nguon's claims, nor did it contact the school district to get its side of the story.
Laub said the alliance does not condone violation of school rules by students, but is concerned about policies unfair to some students and carried out "in an unfair manner."
Testimony is the trial is expected to conclude on Dec. 5.
Alan Trudell, a spokesman for the district, has denied that the district engages in discriminatory practices.
Polices about appropriate conduct on school campuses are spelled out in state and local codes, district officials said.
On the privacy claim, district officials said in court papers that Nguon lost that right to privacy because she was openly gay on campus.
from The North County Times

Gay Kiss In Outside Seville Bar

SPAIN - In what the organisers, the Defrente Association, called a ‘Visible display of gay tenderness’ dozens of gay couples held a Besada (kiss-in) outside the doors of a Seville bar on Saturday.
Two youngsters, Fran and David, were expelled by the owner of the bar, allegedly with an iron bar, last weekend for kissing on his terrace, although the owner was released with no charge because of a lack of evidence in a fast track court case held during the week.
The protestors said they wanted to take advantage of the week’s events in the city to read a manifesto in favour of the public display of affection between homosexuals.
from Typically Spanish

No Gay Kissing On American Airlines

American Airlines Flight 45—departing Charles de Gaulle at 10:40 A.M., arriving J.F.K. at one each afternoon—is a tourist’s delight: timed just right to avoid late checkout, leaving time for one last Kir Royale at Les Deux Magots. On August 22nd, the coach cabin was packed with vacationing New Yorkers. Ralph Jackson (21A) and David Leisner (21B) were returning from two weeks in France, while Huffa Frobes-Cross (21F) had stopped over in Paris on his way back from South Africa. Assigned to seats 20A and 20B were George Tsikhiseli, a television journalist, and his writer boyfriend, Stephan Varnier. “We’ve been together only four months,” Tsikhiseli said last week. “So it felt like a honeymoon.”
Twelve days earlier, British police had foiled a terrorist plot to blow up airliners. Heightened security had delayed the flight by about two hours, and passengers, by the time they boarded, were ready to relax. “I had a José Saramago book I was looking forward to reading,” Leisner said. “And then I was going to take some melatonin and have a little nap.”
Shortly after takeoff, Varnier nodded off, leaning his head on Tsikhiseli. A stewardess came over to their row. “The purser wants you to stop that,” she said.
“I opened my eyes and was, like, ‘Stop what?’ ” Varnier recalled the other day.
“The touching and the kissing,” the stewardess said, before walking away.
Tsikhiseli and Varnier were taken aback. “He would rest his head on my shoulder or the other way around. We’d kiss—not kiss kiss, just mwah,” Tsikhiseli recalled, making a smacking sound.
In the row behind them were Leisner and Jackson. “They were like two lovebirds,” said Leisner, who is a classical guitarist. Frobes-Cross, a Columbia grad student who was sitting across the aisle, had overheard the stewardess’s decree, too. “First thing I catch is ‘You have to stop touching each other,’ ” he said. “And I’m, like, Whoa, that’s really weird.”
Leisner and Jackson, who were “astounded,” leaned forward to ask if they’d heard correctly. When Tsikhiseli and Varnier confirmed that they had, the four men summoned a stewardess and asked to speak with the purser.
A little later, the purser appeared at Row 20. She was, by all accounts, calm and professional; to the men’s surprise, she said that she knew nothing about the incident and had not instructed the stewardess to tell Tsikhiseli and Varnier to stop touching each other.
“Which stewardess was it?” she asked.
One of the men pointed out the stewardess—a woman with, as Jackson put it, “Texas hair, like from the nineteen-sixties.” According to Leisner, the purser rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, say no more. I know.”
The purser asked the men to describe what they’d been doing, and she acknowledged that their behavior had not been inappropriate. Tsikhiseli then asked if the stewardess would have made the request if the kissers had been a man and a woman. Suddenly, Leisner said, the purser “became very rigid.” Contradicting what she’d told them before, she stiffly said, “Kissing is inappropriate behavior on an airplane.” She then said that she was busy with the meal service and promised to come back.
Half an hour later, the purser returned, this time saying that some passengers had complained about Tsikhiseli and Varnier’s behavior earlier. The men asked more questions. Who had complained? (She couldn’t say.) Could they have the stewardess’s name, or employee number? (No.) Would the purser arrange for an American Airlines representative to meet them upon landing at J.F.K.? (Not possible.) Finally, the purser said that if they didn’t drop the matter the flight would be diverted. After that, Leisner said, “everyone shut up for a while.”
Maybe an hour later, the purser approached Tsikhiseli and said that the captain wanted to talk to him. Tsikhiseli went up to the galley and gave the captain his business card. The captain told Tsikhiseli that if they didn’t stop arguing with the crew he would indeed divert the plane. “I want you to go back to your seat and behave the rest of the flight, and we’ll see you in New York,” he said. Tsikhiseli returned to coach.
Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said that the stewardess’s injunction to the men was reasonable, and would have been made whether the couple was gay or straight. “Our passengers need to recognize that they are in an environment with all ages, backgrounds, creeds, and races. We have an obligation to make as many of them feel as comfortable as possible,” he said. (He added, “Our understanding is that the level of affection was more than a quick peck on the cheek.”) But a customer-service representative named Terri, reached last week on the telephone, offered the opinion that kissing on airplanes is indeed permissible. “Oh, yeah! Sure. I’ve seen couples who are on honeymoons,” she said. “They just don’t want you to go into the bathroom together.”
from The New Yorker / Lauren Collins

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