CARNAL NATION

The ACLU is suing the high school in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana, alleging that it violated the First Amendment rights of two female students.  The Smith-Green Community School Corporation and Principal Austin Couch behaved inappropriately, they say, by punishing two sophomores who had posted allegedly lewd photos of themselves on their Myspace accounts.

An editorial in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette describes how the two girls went to a sleepover last summer where photographs were taken of the young ladies “pretending to kiss or lick a large multi-colored novelty phallus-shaped lollipop.”  Then the girls did what lots of teenagers do, posting the photos on their Myspace pages for friends to see.  Things went awry when some nosy parker downloaded the photos and passed them on to Principal Couch.  Apparently, the school's handbook gives the principal authority to prevent athletes from playing if their behavior looks badly on the school.  Couch then banned the girls from playing any sports for the next year.

The girls' parents protested, saying the incident had nothing to do with school, so Couch gave the girls the option of lessening their punishment if they a) went to counseling and b) went to every single varsity coach in the school and apologized individually.  (All of the coaches, by the way, are men.)

“The forced counseling was humiliating to the plaintiffs, and being forced to appear before the coaches to apologize for their intended humorous photographs … was profoundly embarrassing,” the ACLU says in the claim.

If this were a private school where students were expected to adhere to moral codes, it's possible--although not really--that the punishment of making the girls apologize personally to a bunch of male coaches might make sense.  But in a public school, one would hope a principal would have better ways to spend his time than by looking at Myspace photos that is sophomores took at a sleepover party over the summer.