Hick High School Cancels Prom To Avoid Having To Allow In A Lesbian

Forsooth

A Mississippi high school faces a lawsuit over its decision to cancel its prom rather than allow a lesbian high school student attend with her girlfriend…

...At the center of the lawsuit is a memorandum from the school to students, dated February 5, which states that prom dates must be of the opposite sex.

Also, when McMillen expressed a desire to wear a tuxedo to the prom, the superintendent told her only male students were allowed to wear tuxes, according to court documents.

Superintendent Teresa McNeece also told McMillen that she and her girlfriend could be ejected from the prom if any of the other students complained about their presence there, according to the documents.

The prom was canceled after McMillen and the ACLU tried informally to get the school to change its stance.

CNN

You may have noticed that at select points in some of my writings, I trash the American South. Several people have emailed me to complain about my “Northeast liberal elitism.” But this isn’t about elitism. It’s about the South being as backwards as shit. Whether it’s an attempt to teach creationism in science classes, or willfully telling a journalist that they don’t like Obama because “He’s a fucking nigger,” or treating gays like second class citizens, many Southerners of this fine nation have a serious problem. This isn’t to say that most of them are like this, but there sure are enough ignorant redneck fuckwits to give the whole region a terrible reputation.

Such is the case with Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, which apparently is run by people so sexually repressed, that in the 21^st century they cannot bear the sight of two gay students attending a prom. As if the poor girl weren’t feeling ostracized enough by her school’s official policy to exclude her and her partner from the prom, the school has sinisterly cancelled the whole thing. Sane people will consider this episode and determine that it is the school officials who are being ridiculous and inconsiderate. But yours truly has spent some time today on the comments threads of the local Southern news media. The anonymous responses are astounding. Many people commenting from locations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other red state backwaters have seen fit to blame the lesbian student for the cancellation. There wouldn’t be a problem, one of them says, if only gays wouldn’t try to advance “their perverted lifestyles down all of our throats. Are you really proud of your sickening selves?”

The claim that gays “flaunt it” is a ragged canard. It’s not as if gays go around unwelcomingly hitting on people of the same sex. When homophobics say that gays flaunt themselves, what they’re really complaining about is the fact that more gays are simply out of the closet. The haters liked the good old days when gays were afraid to let it be known who they are. Thankfully, gays are becoming increasingly accepted in American society. And some people just don’t like it.

Why? Who knows? Religion I’m sure plays a large role. Also, people who merely are different have often been the targets of social ridicule, especially in the South. Different religions, different skin colors, different languages, and different sexualities have never played well down there. These are important factors, as is another commonly overlooked motive because of its uncomfortable premise: the theory that homophobia is often (though not always) the product of repressed homosexual desires in the homophobic himself. Think Roy Cohn, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Roy Ashburn, or any other anti-gay religious or political figure who turned out to be a flaming homo.

So whenever I see rabid homophobia on display, I can’t help but ask myself, what’s really going there?

- Max