Many of today’s college newspapers not only have plenty of gay-friendly coverage, they feature sex columnists who would make Carrie Bradshaw blush. Example: UC Berkeley’s student paper features “Sex on Tuesday”, featuring rotating sex columnists. One writer wrote an article on why straight college men should get in touch with their prostates and experience receiving anal sex. Could this be material for a new show like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”?

The frank sex talk is, no doubt, helpful to a generation of college students who have grown up in an “abstinence till marriage or death” culture. What’s also helpful are the numerous – and near unanimous – editorials in support of gay marriage.

A few weeks ago, outraged that his campus paper came out in support of gay marriage, the president of the Baptist institution Baylor University publicly condemned its campus newspaper for taking an editorial position contrary to Southern Baptist beliefs. Unfortunately, if he had wanted to, he could have de-funded the school paper and suspended the students who wrote the piece. That’s because Baylor is a private university.

School officials at public universities cannot take such action, but that could change.

A federal appeals court will soon decide whether college newspapers can continue to publish, at least in the Midwest, without fear of censorship from college administrators. Regardless of the ruling in Hosty v. Carter, the case is certain to head to the US Supreme Court.

Prior to 1985, many believed that public school newspapers were a public forum. School leaders, such as school administrators or school board members, could not censor an article just because they didn’t like the subject matter. In fact, in California, the Legislature expressly prohibits censorship of the public school press, at every level of education.

But this is no longer the case for the rest of the country. In 1985, in Kuhlmeier v. Hazelwood School District, the US Supreme Court held that public school officials could censor school-sponsored student newspapers as long as they had an educational reason. Since that ruling, the Student Press Law Center, which tracks censorship of the high school press, has documented hundreds of instances of censorship. Many cases have to do with high school papers writing articles in support of gay issues. In a case soon to be decided by the full 7th Circuit Court of Appeal, public college officials are asking that court to hold that the Supreme Court’s ruling affecting high school students should also apply to college students.

In Hosty v. Carter, a school official, unhappy with the bleak coverage given by the student newspaper to the campus, ordered the printer at the paper to stop publishing it. Lower courts condemned her actions, finding that college papers are not the same as high school papers, which are connected to journalism classes and are part of the curriculum. Nevertheless, last month, before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, government lawyers in the case argued that because college newspapers may get some funding and other support from the campus, school officials should be able at least to review student articles for punctuation and grammar mistakes. Under that reasoning, if the Gay & Lesbian Times got an office at City Hall, it would mean that the mayor and city council could have access to the content of the paper.

Rather than suppress a free press, Congress should help expand it. It’s not unusual for student papers to be shut down completely, or students suspended, over publishing distasteful or critical articles. Ten years ago, however, Congress signaled its distaste for such actions by passing a law that indicated private schools receiving federal funds should not engage in censorship. Perhaps in re-authorizing the Higher Education Act in the next few months, it should strengthen that law and prohibit any schools receiving federal funds to engage in censorship that would be unlawful if engaged in by a public school.