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Loading ...Lesbian teen sues to force school to hold prom
03.12.2010 9:52am EST
(Jackson, Miss.) A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom.“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year,’” McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.
The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who is a fellow student, and wear a tuxedo, which the school said also violated policy.
The district’s decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students’ rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen’s free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.
McMillen said she never expected the district to respond the way it did.
“A lot of people said that was going to happen, but I said, they had already spent too much money on the prom” to cancel it, she said.
McMillen said she didn’t want to go back to the high school in Fulton the morning after the decision, but her father told her she needed to face her classmates.
“My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I’m still proud of who I am,” McMillen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “The fact that this will help people later on, that’s what’s helping me to go on.”
The school board statement said it wouldn’t host the event “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” but didn’t mention McMillen. District officials didn’t return calls seeking comment Thursday.
At least one supporter has offered to help McMillen and her classmates hold an alternate prom.
New Orleans hotel owner Sean Cummings told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson he was so disappointed with the school board’s decision he offered to transport the students in buses to the city and host a free prom at one of his properties.
“New Orleans, we’re a joyful culture and a creative culture here and, if the school doesn’t change its mind, we’d be delighted to offer them a prom in New Orleans,” he told the newspaper. “Concluding your high school experience should be a joyful one. One shouldn’t conclude that experience with all their friends on a negative note.”
Same-sex prom dates and cross-dressing are new issues for many high schools around the country, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a Washington-based advocacy group.
“A lot of schools actually react rather than do the research and find out what the rights of these students are,” said Presgraves.
McMillen says she hopes her fight will make it easier for gay students at other schools facing discrimination.
“I want other kids to know that’s it not right for schools to do that,” she said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”
In 2002, a gay student sued his school district in Toronto to allow him to attend a prom with his boyfriend. A judge later forced the district to allow the couple to attend and stopped the district from canceling the prom.
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., said a bill he’s introduced in Congress would make it illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian school students. He said at least 10 states have such laws, and his bill is modeled after those.
“This situation with the prom is a perfect example of why we need to protect students from discrimination. In this case it’s a prom. It other cases, it’s getting beaten up or killed,” Polis said.
The school district had said it hoped a privately sponsored prom could be held.
Southside Baptist Church Pastor Bobby Crenshaw said he’s seen the South portrayed as “backwards” on Web sites discussing the issue, “but a lot more people here have biblically based values.”
Itawamba County is a rural area of about 23,000 people in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. It’s near Pontotoc County, Miss., where more than a decade ago school officials were sued in federal court over their practice of student-led intercom prayer and Bible classes.
The attendance of a Lesbian couple at the prom is not going to be a “distraction to the educational process” . However, it may teach that it is okay to be different and encourage understanding. On the other hand, cancelling the whole prom because of this decision of a young woman to bring a same-sex date is certainly going to encourage anger and homophobia on the part of the entire student body I suspect the school board knows this.
If the board is successful, then we can be assured there will be other boards who will try the same thing.
And yes, I fear this could put more LGBT students at risk of homophobic harassment and bullying.
Bobby Crenshaw, the Baptist preacher should stop kidding himself. Discrimination is not a Biblical value. Christ himself commanded us to love.
Gues you won’t hear … ‘R – E – S – P – E- -C – T’
…at that school.
“biblically based values”… Religiots make me sick. They are eating shrimp and crawfish don’t they? And wear mixed-fiber clothing. Hypocritical idiots…
I agree with a poster on another thread: every time they step in to take our rights away, we should play clips about the abuse they are inflicting.
I understand bobby Crenshaw’s comment. However respect for biblical values does mean restricting others who wish to follow a different path. Allowing a gay student her rights in no way diminishes your rights but restricting the rights of others does infact diminish your values.
Any value system that demands respect needs to earn it and “biblical based value systems” have earned nothing but contempt and rightly so.
If people on blogs are saying this makes the south look backwards, it really is stupid to counter with the argument that people there have biblical based values. That is why we think they are backwards, duh!
Educated people capable of critical thinking have long realized biblical based value systems have very specific goals and those that hold them are simply pawns.
I realized this at a very young age, myself.
“Educated people capable of critical thinking have long realized biblical based value systems have very specific goals and those that hold them are simply pawns.”
Do you says this type of stuff to Jesuits? Or people like Cornel West?
James
Growing up in the south and being gay is hard enough. More homophobia is the last thing we need. Let them have a prom and her wear a tux. Wish I could do my promo again and take my wife/partner that would be amazing
The KKK is alive and growing bolder. Now that the black issue has been taken off the front burner, they are using gays to fuel their hate. And, the Southern Baptist fundemenatalist preachers are the spokesmen spewing hate under the protection of relegious freedom. They are little more than a cruel bunch of ignorant snake handlers!
These bible-thumping, radical, extremist religious zealots need to be stopped. They simply say “If my religion hates you…HEY it’s my religion and i can preach it to the world in public without consequences.” Since when does Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Expression protect these WACKJOBS and allow and encourage them to not only preach hatred in public but also to use this cloak of darkness and evil to watch their actions and words promote hate crimes and violence against a minority??? They get all the protections while they can sit back and pleasurably watch the evening news reports on the latest gay person to be attacked or tortured or beat to death….the whole time relishing in the fact that there’s one less homosexual on the face of THEIR god’s earth, and relishing in the fact that they caused someone to do it by making them believe their god would justify it…They can claim religious diplomatic immunity and zero responsibility. that’s the most anti-American thing I’ve ever heard. Where does the government draw the line? They don’t.
I just read on another site that the ACLU is asking for only $1 for damages (plus legal fees and court costs). That is ridiculous. They should ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The bigots in Mississippi may not give it to them, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. They are filing suit in federal court. Since the law is so clear on this point, one would think it would be a slam-dunk case, but considering the yahoos appointed to the Courts by George W. Bush, you never know.
Any religion, or sect or cult of said religion, that preaches hatred and discrimination towards anyone needs to be listed by the federal government as a hate group alongside the likes of the KKK. They also need to lose their tax exempt status. Period. Otherwise, we as taxpayers are literally funding their bigoted efforts.
> Southside Baptist Church Pastor
> Bobby Crenshaw said he’s seen
> the South portrayed as
> “backwards” on Web sites
> discussing the issue, “but a lot
> more people here have biblically
> based values.”
And that, Bobby,is precisely WHY we view your region as “backward.” Civilized people don’t take the Bible as the end-all and be-all on any particular issue. We’ve progressed a bit in two thousand years!
These religious Nazis want us dead clearly so what are we doing about it? I love my life how about ya’ll?http://www.change.org/actions/view/sex_is_private_even_gay_sex