ANAHEIM - Yesterday evening, the Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) approved a settlement agreement with plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in a book-banning case at Orangeview Junior High School involving a biographical series about gay and lesbian people, "Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians." The subjects of the books include tennis player Martina Navratilova, economist John Maynard Keynes, and writers Willa Cather and James Baldwin. The books were pulled from the library by district officials. The ACLU/SC represented two student plaintiffs, who charged that the censorship of the biographies violated their First Amendment rights and violated state nondiscrimination laws. The suit was filed on December 21, 2000, and sparked heated controversy in the District, including one demonstration outside of the school led by activists in support of returning the books. Today, the ACLU/SC and the District's lawyers will file a motion with the Federal District Court asking for approval of the settlement.

"The swift and successful resolution of this case," said Martha Matthews, ACLU of Southern California's Bohnett Attorney, a staff attorney position funded by Internet innovator and philanthropist David Bohnett to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights, "shows that individuals who take the risk of acting to defend their principles can make a difference."

"The two plaintiffs in this case and their families" said Matthews, "as well as the two librarians who sought to defend a core principle of their profession - intellectual freedom - deserve the thanks of every student and parent in the District for ensuring an environment that doesn't shut out the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people."

The agreement was approved by the Anaheim Union High School District Board yesterday evening. It includes the following key provisions:

--The books from the series "Lives of Notable Gays and Lesbians" will be shelved in an AUHSD school library and available to students within ten days.

--AUHSD will amend its policy regarding library books, specifying that, "No books shall be removed from the library of any AUHSD school where the primary reason for removal is that their subject matter involves sexual orientation," and that, "no AUHSD official or employee shall remove books from the library of any AUHSD school," except pursuant to AUHSD's challenge policy.

--AUHSD will distribute its amended policy to all AUHSD principals, library teachers, and library technicians, as well as a statement encouraging library teachers "to include, when selecting books for school libraries, materials discussing controversial ideas and viewpoints and materials representative of the AUHSD student population in terms of religion, race, ethnicity, disability, gender, and sexual orientation."

"The agreement is a victory for all students in Anaheim Unified High School District, gay or straight," said Matthews. "In the pages of these books, they can now encounter gay and lesbian people who have shaped our world, and those encounters will help them see the world in a new way. That's the point of reading. That's the point of libraries - to illuminate both our own and others' experiences - and to help us understand our common humanity, as well as our differences."

Matthews also commended the District's staff and Board for resolving the issue fairly, quickly, and clearly.

"We're very pleased with the fairness and speed with which this issue was resolved," said Matthews. "The agreement we created is a model of clarity and openness, and other school districts could benefit from reviewing and adopting its general provisions."

Gay- and lesbian-themed books frequently inspire censors. According to the American Library Association, two books for children about gay and lesbian families are among the top ten books banned in the United States. Between 1990 and 1999, the American Library Association reported 497 attempts to remove books from libraries on the grounds that they "promoted homosexuality."

Today's revelations that Chief Parks refused to cooperate with the District Attorney's office in its Rampart investigation, then publicly misrepresented the Department's actions, constitute yet another piece of compelling evidence that the Chief is incapable of leading the Department through the reform process. The Department's tardy or incomplete information-sharing has already compromised the prosecution of some of the officers involved in the scandal, and it gives the lie to the Department's tale of the success of its internal clean-up effort. Once again, we encounter an inevitable truth: the LAPD cannot be trusted to police itself.

Los Angeles is caught in a Catch 22. On the one hand, we have a Police Chief who sets himself up as the place where the buck stops, and a Mayor who has actively supported the Chief's ultimate authority. But both of them have consistently thwarted civilian oversight, the only kind of authority that holds the entire leadership of the Department, including the Chief, accountable.

Without that missing piece, the Chief has the last word on reform - and his interests, as anyone can see, are to retain control and minimize power-sharing. A truly independent civilian oversight body could respond effectively to such a situation, but our Police Commission, appointed and removed at the Mayor's whim, is hardly independent. It has demonstrated again and again its inability to muster a response that runs counter to the Mayor's and the Chief's stance.

Throughout the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the LAPD, there has been a lot of talk about accountability from both our Mayor and our Police Chief. It's time to stop talking about accountability and to institute it. An authoritarian personality does not constitute a system of accountability, and does not eliminate the need for such a system. A five-year consent decree is a necessary first step, but not the final answer. We need meaningful civilian oversight that would put the people of Los Angeles firmly in charge of the officers whose duty it is "to protect and to serve."

Civil rights are too often conceived as individual rights, but families and couples can be discriminated against as well, and these forms of discrimination are as insidious as any other. In 1967, when the Supreme Court overturned South Carolina's interracial marriage ban, it recognized that marriage was a right and that denying that right on the basis of the partners' respective races was a form of discrimination. When the state grants some families protections and rights, but denies them to an entire other class of families - just as it does in excluding gay and lesbian families from the protections of over 300 state laws and over 1000 federal laws - it both imperils and insults those families. The American Civil Liberties Union is strongly opposed to any such discrimination.

When a partner dies through the negligence or wrongful actions of a third party, his or her grief and loss are no less profound because California law refuses to countenance the meaning or value of their relationship; when a partnership dissolves, the financial and emotional entanglements are no less knotty and difficult to resolve because California's current laws consider the two partners strangers to one another; and when a partner suffers a catastrophic illness, he or she is no less reliant on his or her partner's aid simply because that aid isn't allowed for by the state.

These are just three of three hundred reasons the ACLU/SC strongly supports AB 1338, a bill introduced last Friday by Assemblymember Paul Koretz that would confer on gay and lesbian couples who choose to form a civil union the rights and responsibilities state law now reserves solely for married couples. AB 1338 would move California much closer to the ACLU's ideal of complete equality for gay and lesbian couples: equal marriage rights. The bill would not completely realize that goal, since it would not grant gay and lesbian couples the rights and responsibilities derived from federal laws or recognition of their legal union in other states.

I believe that Californians can come together to support the dignity of every human, the integrity of every family, and the worth of each community. Despite deliberate efforts, for instance, to target communities of color with anti-gay messages and images during the campaign for Proposition 22 last Spring, fully 62% of Latina women voters surveyed, a higher percentage than for any other group, support the concept of civil unions for same-gender couples, and a majority of all California voters - 52% - support legal unions for same-sex couples.

The time has come to answer discrimination unequivocally, to turn back laws that exclude people, and to focus on building a better California together. That's going to take all of us, regardless of race, ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, sex, or disability, and it will require the strength that we gain from our families. That's why it's so important to build and strengthen families, as AB 1338 does, rather than excluding them or tearing them apart.