School officials in Newark, NJ blacked out a photo of a gay student’s kiss in a high school yearbook.
The New York Times reported that
Andre Jackson, a senior at East Side High School, leaned over his boyfriend’s shoulder one day several months ago and kissed him on the lips. He took a picture of the smooch with his digital camera.
Like other students, Mr. Jackson later paid $150 to have his own special page of photos in the school yearbook. He decided to include the picture of the kiss, to make not a political statement, but a personal one.
The decision to blot out the photo was made by Marion A. Bolden, the Newark Public Schools superintendent. Ms. Bolden said, “I thought that the photo was suggestive.” She made her decision without seeing the entire yearbook, which “features many pictures of the Class of 2007, including several of heterosexual couples embracing and kissing. On the page immediately opposite Mr. Jackson’s, a young man and a young woman kiss on a couch, his hand on her leg as she sits on his lap.”
Another example of rampant homophobia in US schools, in addition to how schools consistently engaged in psychological and emotional abuse of students.
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