If you haven’t been following the saga of lesbian Mississippi teen, Constance McMillen, let me catch you up real quick.
McMillen is a high school senior in Fulton, Miss. She’s also a lesbian, and like high school kids across America, she wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom. This set off an uproar among the school district and the administrators, sparked a lawsuit from McMillen (funded by the ACLU in part) and the April 2 prom was cancelled. A judge ruled that McMillen’s rights had been violated.
Typical bigoted, homophobic response from a deep South community.
But it doesn’t end there. Parents of kids at Itawamba High School decided to organize a prom to replace the one that was cancelled. It’s assumed McMillen will be invited, and she’s told it’ll be held at a country club in town.
Only, when she and her date get there, there are only five other kids there. Everyone else is at the “real” prom somewhere else in town.
According to McMillen, a brave kid who deserves better, when she talked to kids at school the week of the prom, they all said they were going to the country club.
Disgusting, disgusting behavior, and of course the kids learned this behavior from their offensive, narrow-minded parents.
This is how bigotry and hatred for others not like you gets passed from generation to generation. Every year this crap gets weeded out just a little, but it’s still way too pervasive in a “free” country in 2010.
Hope you’re proud of yourselves, Fulton residents. Hope you all laughed and partied all night while you celebrated your brilliance in outsmarting a kid whose biggest crime, her biggest offense, was wanting to be treated just like the rest of you.
Who just wanted to be a part of the fun and feel like a normal teen.
So glad you put a stop to that, Itawamba High School. God forbid you accept someone who’s different than you.
God forbid.
(P.S.: You think Ellen DeGeneres, and who she is and what she stands for, isn’t important? Check this out).
**So my best friend Clay and his wife Amanda welcomed a baby girl named Camille into their family 10 days ago. Clay, as good, honest and true a friend as you can hope for (don’t worry, I know he’s not reading this, he’s way too busy right now), assured me he was prepared for fatherhood.
“You sure you guys aren’t going to want to hire a nurse, or have family come visit right when the kid is born?” I asked numerous times.
“Nah, we got it, we’ll be fine,” he always said.
Ha. Since I don’t have kids of my own yet, I find it amusing to experience fatherhood vicariously through Clay, and will try to share some of his experiences on the blog from time to time.
I talked to him Thursday night and asked how it was going.
“I’m exhausted,” he said. “Seriously, don’t ever have kids. Really. It’s a bad idea.”
Asked to describe what it’s been like, he sighed deeply.
“It’s like a little alien has come into your home, and they’re checking stuff out, and they can’t do anything by themselves, so you have to watch them every minute.”
Ah, Clay. I’m sure it gets better at some point. To all the parents out there: It does, right?
**Finally, I ranted and raved along with millions of others about how royally CBS botched the greatest three minutes of the year in sports, “One Shining Moment,” the other night.
Well, God bless the Internet once again. Some guy decided to re-insert the Luther Vandross version into this year’s highlights, to produce a far superior “OSM.”
Wide World of Stuff 