I know this subject is probably over publized at this point, but I really want to discuss this in a civilized fashion that can not be done in the comment section on a news site.
For those that haven’t heard the story, or want more details on it here is a link to the story.
Doubtless they already knew that a group of parents were going to hold a “private” event, probably financed by the local Baptist church. They felt the need because it’s Mississippi.
Probably the girl is standing up for what she believes, but it’s difficult to tell from this distance. She should probably get the fuck out of Mississippi as soon as she can.
I’m from Massachusetts. My prom was in 1976. I remember that two guys went together. They might even have sat at the same table I sat at. I don’t think they were gay. They could have been. I don’t think anyone ever asked them. But in Massachusetts, we generally have more to think about than who’s doing who.
They cancelled the prom so as to make it look like it was the girl’s fault - to exploit the attitude which says: those gays , they ruin everything, why can’t they just follow the rules like normal people - this is how homophobic adults spread resentment of gays to children - it’s actually a clever strategic manuever.
i’m confident that there’s probably not a whole lot of ideological drive behind the girl’s initial request - i think she just wanted to participate in the prom in a way that’s fun for her - but she’s also a teenager, and now that she’s got the media attention and her face on the news sites, she’s going to go with it and milk it for what it’s worth to her publicity-wise.
my personal opinion is that kids should be allowed to go to the prom with other kids and dance with their friends regardless of who’s gay and who isn’t - the fact that a bunch of ignorant adults are willing to ruin the event for everyone rather than allow a gay student to participate is pretty reprehensible
1.) They calmed the storm before it became a storm. The thing is, if you make the correct decision about letting this student bring her girlfriend to the prom, then you open up a whole can of worms with other students bitching about lesbians being permitted to go along as dates. Even if the other students just look at it as a noteworthy event and tell their parents (even though the students don’t find anything wrong with it) the parents will find something wrong with it. The next thing that you have is parents complaining about the sort of morally reprehensible (it’s not, by the way) behavior being condoned by this school and sending their kids to other school districts or public schools…not to mention the immediate complaints.
Anyway, if your enrollment as a public school falls, all of the funding you get drops. Also, you don’t want to piss off the parents that are on the boosters that make serious contributions or lose the children of any of those parents as students at the school.
In the end, it’s a business decision. They don’t really make or lose anything off of the prom, so they would just as soon can that event to avoid pissing anyone off. That’s just another affect of an overly PC-World, though, you don’t want to piss anyone off so everyone misses out on something.
2.) I don’t know what the girl’s motivation is. I don’t have any reason to believe that it is not her actual girlfriend. I don’t know why wanting to wear a penguin suit would be a deal-breaker, but it doesn’t seem like the school was going to let her take her girlfriend anyway, so that part is largely irrelevant.
3.) From a civil rights standpoint, I think that they should have just let the two girls go to the prom together. I don’t know that they necessarily had to bend on the dress-code, because I don’t know that dress codes really become civil rights issues. From the standpoint of the school, I think they took the action that they felt would piss off the fewest people that (financially) mattered.
What I don’t get is why this girl didn’t simply find a few guys that didn’t have dates and get one to, “Take,” her and one to, “Take,” her girlfriend.
The prom was canceled because they thought it was better not to have one. why did they think it better to not have a prom? I cannot say with any certainty. Perhaps they were doing it because they are ignorant and fearful of lesbians, gays, witches, etc… Perhaps they were fearful of pissing off a bunch of anti-sodometic* parents and organizers. Perhaps the mothers are pissed because the female youth of Mississippi would rather get it on with each other rather than their physically pathetic, mentally dazed and jaded video game playing institutionalized cronies of the consumerist culture they call children. I mean, why get all pissed off at one pair of lesbos unless there is some sort of offense given to the male community? There will be many a stag alumni going to the private prom party i wager, and a lot of individuals not confident enough to go at all. =D>
Sometimes people cause a fuss for attention, othertimes innocent people get caught in the middle. I cannot say for sure which circumstance this is, so i won’t single out the girl by making fun of her… :-&
My opinion is that a bunch of uptight americans are too socially divided, unintelligent, and fearful to accept something so trivial as a woman wearing a tuxedo to a prom or dancing with another female. At my prom there was a butch lesbian wearing a tuxedo nicer than mine. People looked and snickered for a few moments, then they all realized that if we had nothing better to talk and worry about we must be pathetic. And the butch lesbo stood and walked tall, along with her date. Give Mississip a decade or so and a few dozen million in education funding…
Since this thing has become an issue, there is clearly a measure of Ignorance involved. this is the root of the cause.
Note: * “Anti-sodometic” - Formed by combining the words “anti” and “sodomite”, used to describe a person who is inherently opposed to, or in committed opposition to homosexuality. (A Wonderer Original)
A public school should never be able to show such blatant discrimination, nor treat a student in such a deliberately insulting and debasing manner. The girl has every right to sue the school officials who made this decision, assuming that they have openly admitted that she is the reason why they cancelled the prom, which indeed seems is the case here.
People are morons. Who cares if she wants to bring her girlfriend, that isnt illegal, its not violating a single school rule, in fact last time I checked sexual preference was a legally protected class in this country. I hope the school gets sued and this girl makes out like a bandit and spends it all on herself and her lover, while the officials get thrown into prison. I’m sure that they will not, but it sure would be wonderful if they were.
Why should she even have to pull that kind of sub rosa shit in the first place? Why can’t a couple of kids just dress up and go to the prom together if that’s what they want to do? And we should allow, if not encourage, kids to think outside the box of their gender. It’s just plain old repression of the non-conformist. You want to neutralize the situation then let her go to the prom without stirring up a fuss. But i’m sure this isn’t the first time the girl’s professed lesbianism became a cause of concern among the local elders - so perhaps it’s satisfaction of some unspoken but very real pre existing vendetta, perhaps these are legitimately homophobic people doing the closest thing they can do to publicly demonizing the school’s most brazen openly lesbian student . . . given we’re talking about Mississippi, i would say that’s a distinct possibility
but then again, i’m from the NE and we’ve been programmed to think that way about the south
one of the many things the media exploits in a story like this is the inherent culture clash - backwoods hicks versus yankee elitists - as we see here, it sells itself
still, it’s pretty retarded that they cancelled the entire prom over this - Faust’s right, this would never happen in MA
Now that you guys mention it, if you could take someone of the same sex to prom back in like the 70’s-80’s why is it suddenly such a big deal now? Wouldn’t you think that over the years we would have grown more accepting to the gay lifestyle instead of becoming more closed against it? Is it because the conservatives(no offense to sane conservatives here) now have a pretty much plug and played smear campaign agianst anything they don’t like, including gay people wanting to be treated equally. Or is it just Missippi? My vote is with the latter by the way.
Progress creates its own reaction. That such a reaction would take a conservative outlook oughtn’t surprise us, it is pretty much an inescapable fact of human society. Absent such progress, such views don’t exist.
In America, there was very little concern about gays in the military during WWI and WWII. However, during periods relevant to those conflicts there were a lot of police raids on gay bars. In America, right now there is a lot of concern about gays in the military (has been for some time too) but not a lot of police raids on gay bars – in fact, there are even a small handful of States that recognize gay marriage.
Good point Xunzian, though the way you make it sound, most conservatives are anti progress. Its not that entirely, to me it seems that conservatives want progress, just progress in the wrong direction. But that’s niether here nor there, anyway just another question. Why were the police raiding gay bars? Who were they arresting and why? Sorry if you guys find my constant string of questions tedious.
I can agree with that wording. Just different ways of formulating the same principle. As for raids on gay bars, check out the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots Stonewall riots for a watershed moment in that bit of history. But why were the police raiding gay bars? Because homosexuality was illegal, that is why.
Thanks for the link, but it was seriously illegal to be gay? Well looking at it that way, gay rights really has come pretty far with some states allowing them to marry. Then again there are back water states like my own PA where we’re still trying to ban it. And people are dissing Missippi, I don’t want to see what happens next time Utah or PA hits the headlines for bigotry. But the world is imperfect and a lot of people just want to shove their head up their ass and hope for the best.
=D>