Okeechobee, Fla., is pretty much what you expect — rural and conservative. Oh, and intolerant of gays, too.

Tuesday, U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore issued an opinion that the Gay-Straight Alliance of Okeechobee High School can meet on campus like all other noncurricular school groups, and that its case against the School Board of Okeechobee County is closed. The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling “ground-breaking.”

It certainly is in Okeechobee County. I was there once, for a football game 30 or so years ago. I have never seen more purple cowboy hats and boots before or since. Purple is one of Okeechobee High’s school colors, so you can understand how they might get a little touchy if some gay people tried to appropriate their color.

Oh, and they call themselves Brahmans — not after the Hindu concept of Brahman as the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space and being — but after the Brahman cattle that are raised in large numbers in those parts. Actually, I remember a bunch of them being raised right across Highway 441 from the football field.

The club was started in the interest of promoting understanding and tolerance, following the school’s act of discrimination:

Yasmin Gonzalez started the Gay-Straight Alliance in 2006 when she learned she couldn’t take another girl to the Okeechobee High School prom. The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of Gonzalez and the Alliance after club members were prevented from meeting on campus and Principal Toni Wiersma refused to officially recognize them as a student group.

In April, Moore ruled the case moot because Gonzalez had graduated and the club had no more members, but he re-opened it upon learning school officials prevented another student, current Club President Brittany Martin, from reviving the group.

Throughout the discovery process, a temporary injunction existed allowing the club to meet, but still the school board put up “roadblocks” like preventing members from using the word “gay” during meetings.

The school administration argued that it was uncomfortable with the club because it was “sex-based” and the school has a policy of teaching abstinence-only sex education. Now how’s that for logic? That’s what happens when lazy people use “sex” when they mean “gender.”

Currently, the club has only six members, most of whom are straight, who say they joined the club to stand up for gay friends and family members.

I wish you good luck, kids.

Thirty-odd years ago when we won the football game, we were cursed, threatened, spat on, showered with soda pop and rocks were thrown at our bus as we left.

They don’t tolerate losing in Okeechobee County.

Rep. Ron Paul, M.D., (R-Texas) the former Republican and Libertarian Party candidate for president, cast the only vote against banning lead in toys in the House of Representatives yesterday:

Alarmed by a year of recalls targeting millions of tainted toys, the House voted overwhelming Wednesday to ban lead and other dangerous chemicals from items such as jewelry and rubber ducks that could end up in kids’ mouths.

The legislation also would toughen rules for testing children’s products and take steps to give more muscle to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which was criticized last year for its feeble handling of a flood of goods from China deemed hazardous to children.

Even flat-earthers like Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member of the committee that first passed the ban, were in favor of it. “[Our] children’s toys will be tested in the laboratory before they are tested by our children on the living room floors of America,” Barton said, in a prepared statement.

Key to the libertarian philosophy is the idea that citizens should take responsibility for themselves — that government’s role should be limited to protecting the country from its enemies but little else. For example, government should not provide pensions like Social Security or medical aid through systems like Medicare.

Libertarians also believe that in situations like this, when toy manufacturers infuse their products with enough lead to cause brain damage in children, it is up to the market to punish them.

But dealing with a sudden rise in the incidence of lead in toys is a glaring example of how the libertarian approach is impracticable. By voting against the ban, Dr. Paul is saying that toy manufacturers should be free to put whatever poisons they like in their products, and then, after enough children become brain-damaged to cause a panic, the market — the toy-buying public — will exact its punishment by taking away the manufacturer’s revenue.

Dr. Paul has five grown children, and it would be interesting to know whether he really believes the laissez-faire interests of Chinese toy manufacturers are more important than the health and safety of his 18 grandchildren.

On the other hand, Paul has never been an ideologically pure libertarian. While he apparently believes the government has no business protecting children from malfeasant toymakers, he is firmly in favor of passing laws to regulate the pregnancies of American women as well as the exclusion of gays from the civil right to marry.