(AgapePress) - The Boyd County School Board in Kentucky has banned all student clubs in the district. That action comes after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the board if it did not allow a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) group to meet on a high school campus.

Christian attorney Scott Lively of the Sacramento-based Pro-Family Law Center had advised Boyd County High School officials to adopt a pro-civility curriculum that addresses issues such as bullying, but also teaches that homosexuality is wrong. If that step were taken, the GSA would have been classified as a curricular club and lose its protection under the Equal Access Act, thus allowing the school to regulate the pro-homosexual group.

But Lively says the community would rather have no clubs at all on campus than have a homosexual club. He explains why the district might consider that arrangement an advantage.

"The additional benefit for the school board, by not having any clubs, is that they don't have to deal with lawsuits from the ACLU," Lively says. "Our strategy of going forward with this curriculum [is] a novel legal strategy that potentially would be challenged by the left. I believe it would prevail in court and set a model for the whole nation to follow, but nevertheless this school board is trying to protect its budget."

Lively explains that school officials had few options. "The only way that's been proven to succeed in stopping the GSA clubs is to ban all clubs," he says. "That's the proven method, and there's the least legal exposure for doing that."

Lively is hopeful that next school year, Boyd County will adopt a pro-civility curriculum and reinstate all its student clubs -- except the GSA and other curricular clubs. In the meantime, a church across the street from the high school has offered to host the school's Bible Club at its facilities.

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