Constance McMillian Not Invited to Makeshift Prom

[BlackestLily]

Apparently, she's not getting any support from her classmates who have shunned her.
The people have spoken, and this time, since it's a private event, there's no one to cry to.

http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?ID=24662

I truly have to ask, why are you posting this? What are you getting out of it?

 

[Crash Brickwall]

One thing I know for sure. These girls are definitely not backed up by the rest of America. I find mixed feelings everywhere I go. This is not the only town in the freaking country with these attitudes.

I don't support gay rights, minority rights, or women's rights. Those lobbies are far too self-serving. What I support are equal rights for everybody. Moral issues like this should be left to the individual states and towns. If you don't like the culture of one town just move to one more suitable.

 

[Redmage]

I don't support gay rights, minority rights, or women's rights. Those lobbies are far too self-serving. What I support are equal rights for everybody. Moral issues like this should be left to the individual states and towns.

That's interesting.

Equal rights for everyone is great. So, for example, you support the right of a lesbian to bring her girlfriend to a prom? That is only the equal of a straight boy's right, so when everyone's equal that's how it will be.

Come the day.

What I'm not clear on is how supporting equal rights meshes with supporting people who deny those rights, as long as their "morality" demands it.

 

[Bohemianne]

I don't support gay rights, minority rights, or women's rights. Those lobbies are far too self-serving. What I support are equal rights for everybody.

^ Genius.

In this thread and the other, if you don't side McMillen, you are discriminated and you will be branded. Can't there be "other's" opinion? These are all discussions anyway. But Nevermind now. Aliens do not belong to this thread anyway.

Equal rights must rule here, there and everywhere.... but it ended here.

 

[MrMacphisto]

So there WILL be a prom in this area of Mississippi?

Crap...

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vfhGWeaPouc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vfhGWeaPouc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

The BEST music number of all Family Guy episodes...

 

[MrMacphisto]

One thing I know for sure. These girls are definitely not backed up by the rest of America. I find mixed feelings everywhere I go. This is not the only town in the freaking country with these attitudes.

I don't support gay rights, minority rights, or women's rights. Those lobbies are far too self-serving. What I support are equal rights for everybody. Moral issues like this should be left to the individual states and towns. If you don't like the culture of one town just move to one more suitable.

Well, the KKK would definitely agree with the sentiment of that last sentence.

 

[Redmage]

Well, the KKK would definitely agree with the sentiment of that last sentence.

True that.

"All that miscegenatin' and fraternizin' and lettin' colored boys sit at the counter with white folks is agin' our moral standards. So all those darkies should just pick up and move to someplace more to their likin', if'n they don't like how we do things."

If everybody's rights are equal, that is.

It is just amazing to watch people - with no apparent trace of irony - insist on "equal rights" as an excuse for denying equal rights to others.

 

[Master Baiter]

Can we all just try to focus and stay on topic?

This thread is definitely not about minorities, specifically blacks, and how they are viewed by the media. This seems to get injected into every discrimination thread. If you want to discuss that, then start another thread. Damn.

This thread is also not about gays vs the rest of the country, and how gays are discriminated against.

It is about a lesbian high school student wanting special treatment and not getting it.
Not equal treatment, because that's exactly what the school board was giving her, but special treatment.

This girl seems to think that because of her sexual preference, the same rules that apply to the rest of her classmates, don't apply to her.

This is what I have a problem with.

If she wants to change the rules, there are other tactics she could have employed besides strong arming the school district with the ACLU and an impending lawsuit.
It backfired on her, and now she is facing the wrath of her classmates, whose prom she single handedly destroyed with her lack of compromise and selfish behavior.

Is it really such a wild stretch of the imagination to see why her classmates despise her for this?

A lot of people across the country (and on this forum) think she was wronged by not being allowed to "be herself" when in reality, she was breaking several rules that were put in place and being followed by the rest.

 

[Redmage]

Can we all just try to focus and stay on topic?

This thread is definitely not about minorities, specifically blacks, and how they are viewed by the media. This seems to get injected into every discrimination thread. If you want to discuss that, then start another thread. Damn.

Homosexuals aren't a minority?

But it's certainly true that people who oppose gay rights don't like being reminded that they sound exactly like those who opposed equal rights for blacks.

The thing is, if it's not right to do something to a straight black man, then how could it be right to do the very same thing to a gay white woman? Until those who oppose equal rights for gays can answer that question, I'm afraid they'll keep hearing it whether they like that or not.

This thread is also not about gays vs the rest of the country, and how gays are discriminated against.

It's not? A lesbian is discriminated against, but it's not about discrimination?

It is about a lesbian high school student wanting special treatment and not getting it.
Not equal treatment, because that's exactly what the school board was giving her, but special treatment.

Interesting. So, a straight boy could bring a girl to the dance, but she could not, and yet she and that boy were treated equally, you say?

How do you figure that?

I'm going to take a guess. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Your reasoning is that both the straight boy and the gay girl are forbidden from bringing a partner of the same sex to the dance, and so in that sense are exactly equal. Is that about right?

If so, then I have a question that I just know you won't like. Was it wrong when both blacks and whites were forbidden from dating people of the opposite race? If so, then why, since everyone was treated equally then too?

Is it really such a wild stretch of the imagination to see why her classmates despise her for this?

Not at all. I don't even have to imagine bigotry - I've seen it firsthand, so I know just what it looks like.

A lot of people across the country (and on this forum) think she was wronged by not being allowed to "be herself" when in reality, she was breaking several rules that were put in place and being followed by the rest.

Yes, I can only imagine the self-control that it must take for straight kids to resist dating a partner of the same sex.

 

[goddess_nemesis]

If she wants to change the rules, there are other tactics she could have employed besides strong arming the school district with the ACLU and an impending lawsuit.
It backfired on her, and now she is facing the wrath of her classmates, whose prom she single handedly destroyed with her lack of compromise and selfish behavior.

Now those are the questions that we don't have answers to: How long had she been trying to get the school to change the rule so it'd be equal to everyone? Or what tactics she had tried before resorting to using the ACLU? You can only do so much without getting anywhere before needing to bring in a group that helps with discrimination.

Plus the school didn't have to cancel prom. Rather than fight to keep the rules they have in place, they choose the easy way out and canceled prom. She challenged their rule of dates needing to be the opposite sex, but they decided to punish everyone.

Also this won't be the end. She's just the start. Next year or five years from now there could be another lesbian who is told that her date must be of the opposite sex, but instead of allowing them to discriminate against her, she challenges the rule again. It'll keep happening until they change the rule to be equal towards ALL the students and not just the straight ones.

 

[Crash Brickwall]

Equal rights for everyone is great. So, for example, you support the right of a lesbian to bring her girlfriend to a prom? That is only the equal of a straight boy's right, so when everyone's equal that's how it will be.

That would be a really crushing argument on your part Mage except for one thing. There is no "right to bring a girlfriend" involved. The policy in question permits anyone to bring a member of the opposite sex. That right applies to all of them. That's what I support. Equal Rights.

What I'm not clear on is how supporting equal rights meshes with supporting people who deny those rights, as long as their "morality" demands it.

Allow me to dumb it down for you, then.

Equal rights as I see it would mean that the same permissions and the same restrictions apply to everybody equally. No special exceptions or privileges based on color, gender, or race. The application of equal rights across the board.

In the case of the lesbians, are the rights applied to all equally? Well let's see.

Straight kids: Permitted to accompany someone of the opposite sex.
Lesbian kids: Permitted to accompany someone of the opposite sex.

So far so good.

Straight kids: Forbidden to accompany someone of the same sex.
Lesbian kids: Forbidden to accompany someone of the same sex.

Voila. Equal rights for everybody.

To allow the lesbians to accompany each other would require a SPECIAL EXCEPTION! In other words they would be granted a privilege nobody else in the school has.

People, don't listen to all this bullshit propaganda of "denial of rights." It's a cliche buzz phrase designed to inflame the easily manipulated masses into accepting special privilege legislation.

 

[Mister Scruff]

There is only one "right" which has been violated here, and that is the right to live your life according to your desires, unfettered by the interference of small-minded pedants and bigots. As far as who you can bring to a school dance goes that's not an issue of "rights", because having a school dance is not a "right" but rather a privilege.

As far as I can tell the argument is that all kids are allowed to bring someone to the dance. That's fine. Where it falls down, however, is when you start saying that allowing a homosexual person to bring their partner would require some sort of special privilege over and above the one afforded to heterosexuals. It falls down because the school placed a stipulation that the partner must be of the opposite sex, near as I can tell.

If that proviso, which discriminates against homosexuals in a very active way, had not been added in the first place, then everyone would've been able to bring whomever they wanted and all would have been fine. As it was this stipulation then created the need for the special exception for homosexuals, and it is thus discriminatory. And that's where the violation of rights comes in.

tl;dr: You can't stack the deck against someone like this and then whinge about how they are asking for "SPECIAL EXCEPTIONS!" when all they're really asking for is a fair shuffle of the cards.

 

[goddess_nemesis]

In the case of the lesbians, are the rights applied to all equally? Well let's see.

Straight kids: Permitted to accompany someone of the opposite sex.
Lesbian kids: Permitted to accompany someone of the opposite sex.

So far so good.

Straight kids: Forbidden to accompany someone of the same sex.
Lesbian kids: Forbidden to accompany someone of the same sex.

Voila. Equal rights for everybody.

How is that equal rights for everybody?

Straight kids: Permitted to bring the date of their choice
Gay kids: Forbidden to bring the date of their choice

Nope, I don't see how that is equal.

 

[TMF Jeff]

ok...

First of all, keep this civil and impersonal.

Second, stay on topic.

And finally, why in the name of all things sane and reasonable, do ANY of you care what other people think about your opinions on this subject? I have an opinion on it, I expressed it once, and I was done. What is there to be gained by arguing about this to this degree? Do any of you think you have changed even a single mind, or accomplished anything other than raising your own level of frustration?

Seriously, grow up.

 

[Mister Scruff]

And finally, why in the name of all things sane and reasonable, do ANY of you care what other people think about your opinions on this subject? I have an opinion on it, I expressed it once, and I was done. What is there to be gained by arguing about this to this degree? Do any of you think you have changed even a single mind, or accomplished anything other than raising your own level of frustration?

Couldn't this same thing be said about pretty much every argument about every topic ever spoken about by humankind?

 

[Redmage]

That would be a really crushing argument on your part Mage except for one thing. There is no "right to bring a girlfriend" involved. The policy in question permits anyone to bring a member of the opposite sex. That right applies to all of them. That's what I support. Equal Rights.

Yep, I saw that coming. That's what most of this "equal rights means no rights for gays" nonsense boils down to. It's taken a while to peel back all this high-blown talk of "equal rights" and expose what it was really about, but I figured if I asked the question often enough it would come out.

So I'll just ask you the same thing I asked in another post. Heck I'll just cut and paste:

Your reasoning is that both the straight boy and the gay girl are forbidden from bringing a partner of the same sex to the dance, and so in that sense are exactly equal. Is that about right?

If so, then I have a question that I just know you won't like. Was it wrong when both blacks and whites were forbidden from dating people of the opposite race? If so, then why, since everyone was treated equally then too?

If it's wrong to do it to a straight black man, then it's just as wrong to do it to a gay white woman.

 

[Redmage]

And finally, why in the name of all things sane and reasonable, do ANY of you care what other people think about your opinions on this subject?

Um, Jeff, discussion forums exist for people who care about what others think of their opinions. That's a big part of why anyone talks about anything (politics, religion, even tickling) in a place like this.

As for changing minds, it depends on the minds you mean. I don't hold out any hope of changing the opinions of some of our esteemed posters here. But I do hope to sway minds of readers in the middle, who are trying to come to grips with these issues and haven't set their opinions in stone just yet.

 

[Master Baiter]

Now those are the questions that we don't have answers to: How long had she been trying to get the school to change the rule so it'd be equal to everyone? Or what tactics she had tried before resorting to using the ACLU? You can only do so much without getting anywhere before needing to bring in a group that helps with discrimination.

Plus the school didn't have to cancel prom. Rather than fight to keep the rules they have in place, they choose the easy way out and canceled prom. She challenged their rule of dates needing to be the opposite sex, but they decided to punish everyone.

Excellent post Nemesis! You brought up some very relevant points which have not been considered until now.

I don't like the ACLU and tend to respond with a knee jerk reaction, which is not always the best thing to do. I will admit that.
It's a lot like PETA in the sense that I'm not for torturing animals, but I don't like their tactics.

The school did not have to cancel, but with budgetary restraints, they made the decision they felt was best for the school district as a whole.

Let's not lose sight of the big picture here: education. There is only so much money to go around.

I believe it became a shoving match, that eventually everyone involved lost.
The school district, Constance, and her classmates.

But as you said, a lot of facts were withheld from the original story.

Enquiring minds want to know!

 

[maverick83]

It is about a lesbian high school student wanting special treatment and not getting it.
Not equal treatment, because that's exactly what the school board was giving her, but special treatment.

This girl seems to think that because of her sexual preference, the same rules that apply to the rest of her classmates, don't apply to her.

This is what I have a problem with.

If she wants to change the rules, there are other tactics she could have employed besides strong arming the school district with the ACLU and an impending lawsuit.
It backfired on her, and now she is facing the wrath of her classmates, whose prom she single handedly destroyed with her lack of compromise and selfish behavior.

Is it really such a wild stretch of the imagination to see why her classmates despise her for this?

A lot of people across the country (and on this forum) think she was wronged by not being allowed to "be herself" when in reality, she was breaking several rules that were put in place and being followed by the rest.

I don't think what she wanted can be considered "special treatment", by any rational standard. The rule she was breaking was disciminatory, and as such, its very existence violates the concept of equality. Arguing that it applies to everyone (and mind you, only actually affects those it is discriminating against) does not change that.

 

[kis123]

Excellent post Nemesis! You brought up some very relevant points which have not been considered until now.

I don't like the ACLU and tend to respond with a knee jerk reaction, which is not always the best thing to do. I will admit that.
It's a lot like PETA in the sense that I'm not for torturing animals, but I don't like their tactics.

The school did not have to cancel, but with budgetary restraints, they made the decision they felt was best for the school district as a whole.

Let's not lose sight of the big picture here: education. There is only so much money to go around.

I believe it became a shoving match, that eventually everyone involved lost.
The school district, Constance, and her classmates.

But as you said, a lot of facts were withheld from the original story.

Enquiring minds want to know!

This is the best post you've made since all of this started.

There are many issues the public hasn't been made privy too so it leaves us to judge based on what we do know.

I can agree with you about ACLU; sometimes I wonder if they're just taking us to hell. But I personally feel that things shouldn't have gone this far and the school and Constance should've come to some sort of compromise. In the end, all lost, there are two proms, and two girls are changed forever. None of this had to happen IMO.

This world is changing and although I have no problem with traditon, some things just don't fit anymore. Homosexuality has been here pretty much since the stone age; we need to learn how to peaceably live amongst each other. We don't have to agree what's right or wrong; but they're human beings just like heteros and deserve human and civil treatment.

 

[Bohemianne]

But I personally feel that things shouldn't have gone this far and the school and Constance should've come to some sort of compromise. In the end, all lost, there are two proms, and two girls are changed forever. None of this had to happen IMO.

This world is changing and although I have no problem with traditon, some things just don't fit anymore. Homosexuality has been here pretty much since the stone age; we need to learn how to peaceably live amongst each other. We don't have to agree what's right or wrong; but they're human beings just like heteros and deserve human and civil treatment.

You nailed it for me. This is the other word for me - "compromise." It is very easy to agree if there is merging of thoughts at least in half, and not being gagged or choked to do so.

To those whom I have offended in this topic (if any), I'll just say, I have not taken it at personal level. Just pardon my use of language. I'm not as good.

I'm out of any McMillen topic/thread. Bye.

 

[WorkInProgress]

I think the reason people get excited about other people's opinions is that opinions affect the way the world will operate.

The girl in question may have things to celebrate, but you can be sure, she's paying a price. Being in high school means being surrounded by a community, day in day out, having no choice but to deal with them. For those who enjoy insiderhood to that community, this is no problem, but to those who have the status of outcast, it's a huge one. No matter how much national or even international support she has for her position, and no matter how big a scholarship someone's seen fit to give her, she's still being deprived of the comfort of being an accepted and respected part of her own immediate local community.

I know what it's like to be the class outcast. I wasn't black, gay, or any other identifiable affinity group; I was just "different," and one thing I know is that, when you're in high school, being at peace with the principle that the opinions and acceptance of the narrow-minded peer group you're surrounded by don't matter is easier said than done.

This whole episode just points up the fact that this country has a long way to go when it comes to living up to its stated ideals, and the more shame that comes to that town for the shame it has brought onto this country, the better.

 

[goddess_nemesis]

Just an update: Court backs lesbian student in prom dispute

A US school district violated a lesbian student's rights by banning her from bringing her girlfriend to the prom, a federal judge ruled, but he stopped short of forcing the district to hold the event.

US District Judge Glen H. Davidson refused the American Civil Liberties Union's demand to force the Itawamba County school district to put on the April 2 prom.

However, he said cancelling it did violate 18-year-old Constance McMillen's rights and that he would hold a trial on the issue.

Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/co...ent-in-prom-dispute-451159.html#ixzz0j7GRMgBu

 

[Redmage]

But I personally feel that things shouldn't have gone this far and the school and Constance should've come to some sort of compromise.

What compromise was possible? Constance said "I want to bring my girlfriend to the dance." The school said, "You can't."

It's hard to see the middle ground here. Either the girl is there as Constance's date, or she isn't. It's not as though Constance could take her part-way to the dance and then leave her.

Several people have said "They should have worked out a compromise," but I have yet to see any realistic suggestion for what that could have looked like.

 

[Redmage]

Just an update: Court backs lesbian student in prom dispute

No great surprise there. The school canceled the dance in the first place because they knew they didn't have a legal leg to stand on.

I don't think what she wanted can be considered "special treatment", by any rational standard. The rule she was breaking was disciminatory, and as such, its very existence violates the concept of equality. Arguing that it applies to everyone (and mind you, only actually affects those it is discriminating against) does not change that.

Exactly. As I said in an earlier post, it doesn't take any great self discipline for a straight student to resist the urge to date someone of the same sex. They might as well have a rule against standing in front of the class in your underwear while the teacher beats you with a baseball bat. That one will be at least as widely "obeyed."

The whole "everyone was treated equally" argument is absurd. It's a smoke screen to hide the big lie: that the "right" that is "equal" isn't the right that really matters.

Bringing someone of the opposite sex to a dance isn't the "right" that a straight boy is thinking of when he invites his girlfriend. He's exercising his right to bring the person he cares about to the dance. That person is incidentally of the opposite sex because that's the sort of person he likes in that sense.