I've noticed that high schools tend to mimic primitive society, and the adults are often part of that equation, so I wasn't surprised that school officials at Itawamba High School got into a shunning/ostracizing posture. I was just surprised that they did it so obviously.
See previous post on this story.
See posts re gay rights.
Apr 6, 2010 09:07 EDT
Fake prom staged to trick lesbian kids
Mississippi school that canceled dance to keep female couple away...throws the real party across town
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
Salon.com
...The elaborate lengths to which people will apparently go to avoid a girl in a tux are dispiriting at best, and McMillen's victory may seem to have the word "Pyrrhic" stamped all over it. But in the end, she may well have had a better prom than many of us ever did. (Non-discrimination is a right, but having crappy experiences in high school is pretty much an inevitability.) McMillen told the Advocate that the special ed kids "had the time of their lives ... That's the one good thing that came out of this, [these kids] didn't have to worry about people making fun of them."
It may have been far from perfect, but unlike the blowout across town, that little shindig at Fulton Country Club was everything that I hope for for my own daughters, on their prom nights and their wedding days and all their lives. Because none of those other people matter. On Friday night, Connie McMillen got to walk through that door on the arm of the person she wanted to dance with...
Date and Switch? School Accused of Holding Fake Prom For Lesbian
Jonathan Turly
April 8, 2010
Mississippi’s Itawamba Agricultural High School has been roundly condemned for canceling a school prom in order to avoid having lesbian student Constance McMillen appear in a tux with her girlfriend. Now, the school is accused of an astonishing act of duplicity to add to its earlier act of discrimination. McMillen says that she was invited to a prom arranged with officials off school grounds only to find it was just her and seven other revelers, including two learning disabled students. She later says that she learned that the rest of the student body was attending the real prom across town with the knowledge of school officials...
Girls today are three times more likely than boys to be non-heterosexual.
by Leonard Sax, MD, PhD
Leonard Sax is a family physician, PhD psychologist, and author of Boys Adrift and Girls on the Edge.
Psychology Today
April 3, 2010
You've probably heard about Constance McMillen by now. She's the openly-gay high school senior who wanted to take her girlfriend to the high school prom at Itawamba High School in northern Mississippi. The principal told the girls that all prom couples have to be boy-girl. Ms. McMillen called the ACLU, which threatened the school with legal action. In response, the school board canceled the prom. The ACLU then asked U.S. District Court Judge Glen Davidson to intervene and reinstate the prom. The judge ruled that although the school had violated Ms. McMillen's civil rights, he wouldn't force them to hold a prom. On Friday, April 2, Ms. McMillen attended an alternative prom at the Fulton County Country Club. According to the Associated Press, her girlfriend's parents wouldn't allow the 16-year-old girlfriend to go, so McMillen escorted another young woman instead. To make the story even worse, it turns out that the alternative prom at the Fulton County Country Club was a fake, with only seven kids attending, according to McMillen. The real prom, i.e. the prom which most of the seniors attended, was held at a still-undisclosed location, and McMillen wasn't invited.
The story continues to attract national attention because it's just so darn quaint. Imagine: there are still people who get upset when they see girls kissing other girls! Who knew?
Psychologist John Buss estimates that for most of human history, perhaps 2% of women have been lesbian or bisexual (see note 1, below). Not any more. Recent surveys of teenage girls and young women find that roughly 15% of young females today self-identify as lesbian or bisexual, compared with about 5% of young males who identify as gay or bisexual...
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