SALON

Wednesday, Mar 6, 2013 2:10 PM UTC

Texas high school: Gay couple’s yearbook photo “too intimate”

A yearbook supervisor at Brennan High School refused to put a lesbian couple on the book's "Valentine's Day" page

By

Topics: LGBT, LGBT Rights, lgbt equality, ,

Texas high school: Gay couple's yearbook photo (Credit: Felicia Rivera)

A student at Brennan High School in San Antonio, Texas, has started a petition to protest her yearbook supervisor’s decision to censor a photo depicting her cuddling with her girlfriend.

Felicia Rivera says the Valentine’s Day-themed page featured photos of six other straight couples, and she believes her submission was removed from the book because she is gay. “They claimed that they have nothing against gay rights, but are scared of how much criticism the school would get and how parents of straight people would refuse to buy the yearbooks,” Rivera wrote in her petition against the move.

But school district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said that it’s the photo itself, not the couple, that violates the school’s code of conduct.

“It’s just an intimate picture; there’s no eye contact, they’re both looking down. It looks like a pretty intimate moment,” Gonzalez told MySanAntonio.com. In the photo, Rivera sits with her arms around her girlfriend, resting her nose and lips on her girlfriend’s forehead.

She says the photo didn’t raise any eyebrows — until her yearbook supervisor realized it featured Felicia and her girlfriend. Rivera’s face in the picture is obscured by her hair. “The teacher was perfectly fine with the picture until she found out it was two girls,” she told the New York Daily News. “It’s not right.”

This is the second time in less than a week that a gay couple’s public display of affection has made headlines. On Saturday, a California couple was kicked out of a mall for holding hands and kissing. And like the mall canoodlers, Rivera’s yearbook debacle raises the question: Is it PDA — or gay PDA — that’s being censored here?

Rivera’s father, Felix, plans to find out. On Wednesday, the elder Rivera met with Brennan’s principal, Gerardo Marquez, to discuss his daughter’s presence in the yearbook. He plans to go through it “page by page” to make sure there are no heterosexual couples depicted in a similar way.

“I would be perfectly fine with this,” he said, “if you can show me a picture of another gay couple somewhere in the book.”

Rivera has also asked school administrators if the yearbook would include a photo of his daughter and her girlfriend looking straight ahead and into the camera. He has yet to receive a response.

Katie McDonough is an assistant editor for Salon, focusing on lifestyle. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com. More Katie Mcdonough.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 11 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
203 points204 points | 7 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
171 points172 points | 28 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
136 points137 points | 66 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
74 points75 points | 15 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
40 points41 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations