Miss. Lesbian Made a Headline

People Keep Getting This Story Wrong And It’s Pissing Me Off

I started off writing about Constance McMillen:

[Constance McMillen’s] case drew a national spotlight after she and the American Civil Liberties Union challenged an Itawamba County School District rule that banned same-sex prom dates and a requirement that only male students wear tuxedos.

The ACLU sent a demand letter to Superintendent Teresa McNeece in February, saying the rules against same-sex prom dates and girls wearing tuxedos violated McMillen’s constitutional rights. The district responded by withdrawing its sponsorship and canceling the April 2 event.

In an apparent compromise, school district officials said parents would organize a private event with school chaperones that McMillen could attend, tuxedo and all.

But when she, her date and a friend showed up at Fulton Country Club, only four other people were there. She left after half an hour.

McMillen said she knew there was another event in the works and she has seen several pictures from the party on Facebook.

But then I got pissed off about other things.  First off, there is another side to the story, something that has been glossed over in most of the reports: Constance wasn’t the only one misled from the actual (privately organized) prom; among the seven kids who were at the country club location were two “students with learning difficulties,” as USA Today labeled them.

But when I was discussing this story with someone else recently, I was confronted with an attitude of “so what?” Like, sure, it’s ridiculous that this girl was left out, but, so what? It’s just a prom.  That attitude pissed me off even more, and led me to think about the role this story plays in the gay rights movement as a whole.

The USA Today story rightfully praises Constance for making the best of a bad situation and acknowledging the struggle of the other ostracized students:

“They had the time of their lives.  That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them.”

So, the good people (all 4,000 of them) of Fulton, Mississippi, and specifically, Itawamba Agricultural High School, made a very obvious and public declaration about who is, and who is not, accepted in their society (and at their parties); the message is loud and clear—if you’re different, say, gay or with “learning difficulties,” you’re not one of us. You don’t get the same rites of passage that every other student gets because we have judged you and found you unworthy.

I cannot remember the last time I saw such a clear example of discrimination on such a grand scale.  Here we have an entire fucking prom where people just shrugged their shoulders and turned their backs.  Moreover, the discrimination was not only directed against a gay person and her allies, but also against two others with learning disabilities.

Oh well, one Miss. Lesbian (as she is called in several newspaper headlines, and really folks? You’re not seeing the wrong in that?) didn’t get to have a real prom. Boo hoo. No big deal, right? And those “learning difficulties” kids? They didn’t even know better, so no harm there, right?

Wrong.

I recently have had (yet another) conversation about how people take issue with those in the gay rights movement who call themselves part of the civil rights movement. After all, gay people either choose to be gay (a common misconception that kills me every time I hear it), or, as was recently said to me, choose to “act gay.” If they just acted heteronormative, there wouldn’t be an issue right?

So let’s look, again, at what civil rights actually are (thank you Wiki):

“Civil and political rights are a class of rights and freedoms that protect individuals from unwarranted action by government and private organizations and individuals and ensure one’s ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.”

I have to remind people, constantly, that the legal definition of marriage (as one example of rights denied those in the LGBTQ community) has a lot more to it than just getting a marriage certificate from the state. As the website Equality Matters states:

“In 2004, the Government Accounting Office identified 1,138 federal laws in which marital status is a factor in determining or receiving benefits, rights, and privileges.”

One thousand one hundred and thirty-eight rights that are denied to same sex couples simply because they are not permitted to get married.  And when it comes to love and marriage, that is the one place a gay person cannot pass for straight.

Sure, if she never told anyone she was gay and if she didn’t challenge the rules about wearing a tux, Constance probably could have gone to her prom with her “friend,” and no one would have been the wiser. But to the people who shrug their shoulders and say “so what?”, I ask you this:

Why should any person, of any color, religion, or sexual orientation, have to pass for anything other than themselves?

How does the ability to pass lessen the struggle she and others like her face for the same rights that heteronormative people have?

And how is being punished for being herself anything other than a violation of her civil rights?

Yes, folks, this was a civil rights moment. And yes, folks, it was a civil rights fail. If this was about a black prom person being left out of a white prom, we’d all be up in arms over it, but since it was just one little gay girl and a few of her friends (plus, those “learning difficulties” kids that no one is talking about), then it’s one giant shrug of “what can we do?”

Well, here’s what we can do:

We can stop separating the civil rights movement into the parts we can get behind and the parts we’re not so sure about.

We can stop trying to tell ourselves that the civil rights movement is over—it won’t be over until EVERYONE has the same rights and opportunities, until discrimination based on race, sex, ability or disability, and yes, sexual orientation is no longer tolerated in our society (and we’re a long way from that on all fronts, as far as I can tell).

And we can stop dismissing stories like this as some quirk of a community.

I am very sad for Constance, not because she couldn’t wear a tux and take her girlfriend to the prom, but because she is coming of age in a time and in a place where her rights as an individual are still dismissed as not as important as the collective fear and homophobia of the community she lives in. At this point, the best I can offer her is that we’ll keep fighting for her. And I hope that she keeps fighting too.

[Editor's Note: Feel free to let me (and Even-Tempered White Lady) know your thoughts on the civil rights movement/gay rights movement comparison.  I know there are some who think the two are incomparable and others, like the author of this post, who disagree.  What do you think?]