Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old Mississippi lesbian student, asked officials at Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old Mississippi lesbian student, asked officials at Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Fulton if she could attend her class prom with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. The response of the school was to cancel the entire prom to avoid her attending as a lesbian.
The cancellation had the effect (perhaps intended) to make McMillen the target of blame for destroying the long planned prom. What is striking is that these are now adults who will be shortly released into a world filled with both homosexuals and heterosexuals. Yet, the school opted to cancel a prom to avoid these adults seeing a gay couple on a date.
I have to assume that the officials knew that by canceling the event, blame would be directed at the lesbian student and the ACLU. I can only hope that the students are not so gullible or ignorant.
The school now faces a well-deserved lawsuit, here.
For the full story, click here.
mespo –
Well said. (I agree. And thanks for the Blume link.)
Byron,
You should go back and reread what you said, “the answer is always take government out of the equation because in all of human history, except for a very short period of time after our founding, government does not play by the rules.”
I gave two examples of a State creating rules on how it could govern, and then following them. What informed those rules might have been different back then, but the rules were still followed.
Mespo:
“No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
Doesnt this belong on the thread about California Senator Ashburn and his recent peccadillo?
gYGES:
“The authors of the Magna Carta would like a word with you. For that matter, so would Hammurabi:”
All good tries I do admit, but they didn’t really catch on. I wouldn’t call what came after each an institutionalizing of the concept of individual liberty and rights. No, it took Jefferson, Madison and their friends to do that. And now a mere 234 years after the gauntlet was thrown down, we are worse off than we were in 1775.
I have a hard time understanding why people don’t like freedom. Maybe they are scared of the proposition/prospect of having to fend for themselves without a government safety net?
Buddha:
Here’s more Hawthorne:
“She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers – stern and wild ones – and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter XVIII: “A Flood of Sunshine”
and
“No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter XX: “The
Minister in a Maze”
and
“Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.”
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter X: The Leech and His Patient
and finally,
“What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!”
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
Like fine wine, isn’t it? Some people can flat out write!
Byron,
So the concept for having a document that describing governmental powers\responsibilities was invented at the formation of our country? The authors of the Magna Carta would like a word with you. For that matter, so would Hammurabi:
“If a judge tries a case, reaches a decision, and presents his judgment in writing; and later it is discovered that his decision was in error, and it was his own fault, he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case and be removed from the judge’s bench.”
Gyges:
the answer is always take government out of the equation because in all of human history, except for a very short period of time after our founding, government does not play by the rules. But they sure as hell expect us to.
Puzzling:
You did not go far enough, lets privatize education altogether and that way people can go to the school of their choice. You want outdoor school no problem, Christian school, no problem, capitalist school, French school, GLBT school, great. One size doesnt fit all. Let people choose the school of their choice.
Cut the chains of bondage and free my people. 🙂
I know, I would be charged with arson of a torso and most likely a hate crime. Just to put me out burning in public.
puzzling
Like parades, proms should be organized by private parties and not government.
Right, because we all know discrimination never happens in the private sector.
and what Gyges said
If my Lesbian Lover burns her dress in Mississippi would I be guilty of conspiracy to burn it?
Well, add these officials to the list of people who are known bigots.
Puzzling,
Because high school students have the budgets to put together proms on their own?
If I remember correctly Prom funds mainly came from money raised by various fundraisers at our school. Without an official sanction those fundraisers wouldn’t have happened (most took place on and using school property). Then there’s the dilution of funds\people that would inevitably happen when various groups all held their own proms. It would literally be the end of Prom.
If you want to question what role these social events have in the education process, fine. But the idea that they could be privatized with any sort of wide spread success is just ludicrous.
The answer isn’t always “take out the government” sometimes it’s “make the government play by the rules.”
Methinks Amom And Me could do the best job ever.
“puzzling
Like parades, proms should be organized by private parties and not government.
You want to attend with a same-sex partner? No problem. Want to move your hips like Elvis, show your boxers, or wear a tux? No detention. Want to keep your teachers and government out of your social life? Solved.”
================================================================
Perfect answer.
How much do I love thee, flaming the flame. I am game. I have a burning desire in my heart.
What mespo said.
And bonus points for the Hawthorne reference.
Like parades, proms should be organized by private parties and not government.
You want to attend with a same-sex partner? No problem. Want to move your hips like Elvis, show your boxers, or wear a tux? No detention. Want to keep your teachers and government out of your social life? Solved.
Congress can take a cue from this. Any time some non-heterosexual individual asks to be included, just cancel whatever it is they want to be included in!
They could cancel: the armed forces, all federal agencies, Congress itself, marriage, taxes, etc.
Talk about a small government! Why hasn’t the conservative right picked up on this?
I suppose that they are not very sensitive to others. I suppose the lady’s are classified as licky de split and have not been seen since…..
This is government punishment pure and simple to subject a young person to public scorn and ridicule simply for asking to be treated like everyone else and freely express herself. Is there any doubt this stigmatization is the direct result of sexual prudishness stemming from fundamentalist religion?
“Social interactions provide a set of incentives for regulating individual behavior. Chief among these is stigma, the status loss and discrimination that results from the display of stigmatized attributes or behaviors. The stigmatization of behavior is the enforcement mechanism behind social norms.”
So says Cornell Professor Lawrence Blume, in his paper found here:
http://129.3.20.41/eps/game/papers/0312/0312002.pdf
An important feature is quoted by Blume:
“In the first component, people distinguish and label human differences.In the second, dominant cultural beliefs link labeled persons to undesirable characteristics|to negative stereotypes. In the third, labeled persons are placed in distinct categories so as to accomplish some degree of separation of “us” from “them”. In the fourth, labeled persons experience status loss and discrimination
that leads to unequal outcomes.
Link and Phelan (2001, p. 367)”
Nathaniel Hawthorne would marvel at our lack of evolution as a society. The only difference today is the letter has changed from “A” to “G”.