Associated Press photo
Lesbian high-school student Constance McMillen was told by her rural Mississippi high-school officials that she could neither wear a tuxedo nor bring her girlfriend to her prom — which the officials then canceled altogether because of her insistence that she be allowed to attend with her girlfriend, wearing what she wishes to wear. It wasn’t that long ago that mixed-race dancing was prohibited at red-state high-school proms, and the same “arguments” that were used to justify racial discrimination are now used to justify discrimination based upon sexual orientation — not only in Mississippi but even in the U.S. military, as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is debated even though it clearly violates the principles of the U.S. Constitution.
If you have read me for any time at all, you know that there is a lot that I fucking hate.
I hate the U.S. military. Not the individual members of the U.S. military, necessarily, but the whole damn idea of the U.S. military, with its might-makes-right, jingoistic bent. The majority of those in the military call themselves devout Christians, too, as though Jesus Christ would have had anything to do with their killing for the expansion and preservation of the American Empire in the names of freedom and democracy — and even in the name of Jesus Christ.
Yet, as much as I never would have joined the U.S. military, opposing pretty much all that it stands for (patriarchy, violence and aggression, jingoism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc., etc.), I have a real fucking problem with the fact that non-heterosexuals don’t have equal human and civil rights in the U.S. military, that they can be expelled from the military or prevented from joining the military for solely who and what they are.
I never went to my high school prom, either. Not so much because I’m gay and because in the red state of Arizona in the mid-1980s there was no way in hell that I had the opportunity to go to my high-school prom with another male, but because I hate the whole concept of proms, too. I find them to be pretentious wastes of money, relics from the past.
But the idea that high-school officials in Missifuckingssippi canceled the high school’s prom because a lesbian student wants to attend prom with her girlfriend boils my blue-state blood.
Reports The Associated Press:
School officials in a rural Mississippi county told a lesbian student to get “guys” to take her and her girlfriend to a high school prom and warned the girls against slow dancing with each other because that could “push people’s buttons,” according to documents filed [today] in federal court.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Itawamba County School District and some officials at Itawamba Agricultural High School on behalf of Constance McMillen, 18, who wanted to escort her girlfriend to the prom and wear a tuxedo. A hearing is scheduled for Monday to hear an ACLU motion that seeks to force the district to hold the April 2 prom it canceled after McMillen made her requests.
In the court documents, McMillen said Rick Mitchell, the assistant principal at the school, told her she could not attend the prom with her girlfriend but they could go with “guys.”
Superintendent Teresa McNeece told the teen that the girls should attend the prom separately, had to wear dresses and couldn’t slow dance with each other because that could “push people’s buttons,” according to court documents.
The school district last week said it wouldn’t host the prom “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events.” District officials said they hoped private citizens would sponsor a dance. The decision came on the same day the ACLU asked the district to act on McMillen’s prom requests.
McMillen said she approached school officials weeks ago about wanting to take her girlfriend to the prom.
“I want my prom experience to be the same as all of the other students, a night to remember with the person I’m dating,” McMillen said.
The district, located in northern Mississippi near the Alabama state line, prohibits same-sex dates at the prom. The ACLU has said that violates the rights of gay and lesbian students.
The school district had not responded to the ACLU filing by [this] afternoon.
Christine Sun, a senior counsel with the ACLU’s national gay rights project, said the organization is determined to put the prom back on the school calendar.
Fulton Mayor Paul Walker said he has heard that parents are making plans for a private dance but he didn’t know the details. It’s unclear if gay couples would be welcome at that event….
Shit like this makes me wonder why in the hell the blue states didn’t just allow the red states to secede way back in the day of Abe. Then I remind myself that the oppressed peoples of the red states, without the help of those of the blue states, would be completely at the mercy of the mouth-breathing fucktards who dominate the red states. It’s not right to allow that to happen, it seems to me.
Equal human and civil rights — liberty and justice for all – just don’t grow naturally in the red states. They have to be forced upon the red states from without. It’s too bad that that is so, but it is the red states’ fault — for all of their talk of the founding fathers, for fuck’s sake – for their absolute refusal to live up to the American ideal that every0ne is created equal and that everyone has the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Two female students or two male students dancing at prom together would “push people’s buttons.” Oh, boo fucking hoo.
Was not the very same argument made to outlaw mixed-race dancing at red-state high-school proms past? Or to disallow non-white students to attend prom at all?
And the prom was canceled ”due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events”? Or was the prom canceled because the high school officials are a bunch of fucking homophobes and/or fucking cowards?
“Due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” — that is what you call blaming the victim, in this case the lesbian student who just wants the equal human and civil rights to which she is entitled by the founding documents of the United States of America, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (which, I understand, are being rewritten for the Texas textbooks…).
Goddess bless the ACLU.
If a good number of high-school students truly do have a problem seeing same-sex couples at their schools’ dances, that’s probably because they just never see it. What you never see can feel and seem quite alien.
But it’s fucking circular: Same-sex dancing at high-school proms is rarely or never seen at most high schools, and so it’s taboo, and because it’s taboo, it is banned at many if not most high schools, and because it is banned, it is never seen, and because it is never seen, it remains taboo.
Constance McMillen is brave; she is a sort of Rosa Parks for 2010.
I love her balls.
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