National Lawyers Guild – Oklahoma Chapter

Teaching a high school Ethics class using a play that documents a real life hate crime against a gay man was too much for the administration in Grandfield, OK. The class was canceled and the teacher, Debra Taylor, says she was forced to resign. Many of her former students are upset about that, and say that the school is now refusing to answer their questions about the matter and trying to stop them from speaking about it, in school or publicly, even as the national media is covering the story.

On Friday, March 20, two members of NLG Oklahoma visited Grandfield after hearing that the Westboro Baptist Church, a Kansas based anti-gay group, was planning to demonstrate at the high school. They intended to join a counter-demonstration led by a handful of local students.

As it turned out, WBC did not appear, but a few Oklahomans who wanted to show support for Taylor and the students, did, including the wife of an active-duty GI who served two tours in Iraq.

NLG-OK members James Branum and Rena Guay met with Taylor, about 10 students and a parent, to learn first hand about what has been going on in the small rural town. It was a sad but not entirely unique or surprising story of intolerance of dissenting points of view.

Branum, an attorney based in Lawton, discussed with the group what rights the students were entitled to, and how to handle abridgments of those rights. NLG-OK has agreed to provide legal support for any students that encounter harassment.

We’ll be organizing a fundraising pledge drive for donations dedicated to legal support should it become necessary. We will continue to monitor the situation going forward, and will report here any developments that we can share.

Here are some of the non-local news stories that have been published about this incident:

USA Today
The Oklahoman
Truthdig
Feministing
RH Reality Check